Fighting against the sharing of pirated and illegal content
UltraMegaBit.com is a criminal copyright infringement conspiracy designed to deprive rights holders of income by making copyright material available in an unlawful manner.
UltraMegaBit.com has been featured before on this site. The first time was last year when we labeled UltraMegaBit the new pirate cove. The second and third time were when we explored vast amounts of copyright infringement taking place on the site.
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Lumfile.com is a file locker that has been on our radar for many months. We have taken various mitigation actions against Lumfile over the past nine months. Unfortunately, the site remains a problem however it’s a problem we are determined to resolve.
Last year Lumfile lost it’s hosting in Canada due to the prevalence of illegal content on the site, then in November 2012 the site was one of many terminated by payment processor Avangate. Now the site uses alternative methods of payment processing and routinely ignores DMCA notices issued to it.
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Mega has only been live a few days, however it’s already becoming a go to place for pirates wanting to share copyright infringing content.
We have detected numerous instances of Mega being used to distribute copyright content including cracks (software to circumvent copyright protection), music, movies and software.
Given that Mega says that it encrypts every file uploaded to it, many pirates are seeing it as the perfect storage vehicle for content that they are wanting to share with other pirates or that they wish to store in safe keeping to hang on to should their other distribution methods come under attack by anti-piracy groups.
Let’s examine some of what we have found so far.
Movies are being shared on Mega from piracy websites. This 2008 movie “Defiance” is being shared from a piracy blog and hosted at Mega for download.
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Today Paypal took action to terminate it’s relationship with Hotfile.
Hotfile is one of the largest sites on the Internet. A site which has attracted criticism from numerous anti-piracy groups, rights holder associations and rights holders. Having been embroiled in litigation over allegations it encouraged and facilitated copyright infringement it should have expected this day to come.
Unfortunately it is too often the case that where we find a blatant disregard of copyrights we also find a blatant disregard of human rights.
Recently a young woman was raped in the presence of her partner on a bus in India, a crime which took the life of an innocent victim. The case sent shockwaves around the world as it was noted for it’s savagery and ferociousness. At the same time as the world condemned the mistreatment of women, Hotfile was busy allowing people to share content purporting to depict rape, torture, incest and bestiality.
While the MPAA was taking Hotfile to task for breaches of copyright, we took a holistic view of the systemic problems with the Hotfile service. After substantial examination and research we came up with one simple conclusion. Hotfile is a haven for the sharing of copyright and illegal content.
Paypal took the appropriate action against Hotfile and we would encourage any other payment processor considering doing business with this site to think twice before allowing Hotfile to continue.
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Voucher Reseller is processing payments for Kim Dotcom’s new Mega operation using most credit cards and Paypal as payment methods.
UPDATE: 26th Jan 2013 – Voucher Reseller no longer accepts Paypal payments for Mega Memberships
At the bottom of the sales page is the following statement:
You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud.
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” Article 12 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Secure Online Collaboration
Share encrypted folders with coworkers or business partners and exchange confidential documents with transparent end-to-end encryption.
Powerful File Manager
View and manage your files in your web browser, with integrated accelerated batch up – and downloading.”
We think that rights holders have the right to be safe from unlawful copyright infringement and that this reseller arrangement will probably not last very long.
We shall be working hard to shut down all reseller arrangements for Kim Dotcom and Mega.
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Only Domains are yet another company helping Kim Dotcom use Paypal to process payments for his new venture Mega.
Paypal have widely publicised guidelines when it comes to processing payments for file sharing services and we do not believe that Paypal will allow a situation to eventuate where companies can bypass those restrictions by reselling services to services which have not met with the approval of Paypal.
Below is a screenshot showing the Only Domains payment page for Mega.
Below is a screenshot of the Paypal payment page
We will be working to ensure that this thinly veiled payment processing arrangement is not allowed to continue.
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As a great start to the new year, Crocko.com lost their Paypal payment processing.
Crocko has been a high profile distributor of illegal and copyright infringing content and as a result, there was no other outcome possible than for the site to lose Paypal payment processing.
Now that we have successfully restricted the ability of Crocko to accept payments we will begin working on shutting down payment processing options at all Crocko.com resellers.
As time goes forward we will keep putting pressure on Crocko until such time as this illegitimate business fails.
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