Hotfile
Encyclopedia
Hotfile is a one-click file hosting website that was founded by Hotfile Corp in 2006 in Panama City
, Panama
. Hotfile currently gets 23,000,000 monthly visitshttp://www.google.com/adplanner/site_profile#siteDetails?identifier=hotfile.com.
. Non-registered users are allowed to upload up to 400 MB
at once. After a successful file upload, the user is given a unique URL which allows others to download the file. Non-registered users have to wait 15 seconds in the download queue and might need to enter a CAPTCHA and have to wait 30 minutes to download another file after a previous download session ends (even if the file did not download completely).
In Hotfile's Privacy Policy under the 'Usage Data' section they state "We automatically collect usage information...type of Web browser you use, your operating system, your Internet Service Provider, your IP address, the links you use, and the time and duration of your use of the Service...be aware, however, that we may be required to disclose information such as your IP address which could be used by others to attempt to identify you." This is of concern to many Hotfile users that believe in proper privacy instead of logging every users actions. All of this data resides on US servers making it extremely easy for the courts to order Hotfile to hand it over. This policy of logging IP's and associating them with items downloaded is the completely opposite approach to website such as Fileserve and Rapidshare
.
, Czech
, two types of Chinese
, Dutch
, German
, English
, French
, Hungarian
, Italian
, Japanese
, Polish
, Portuguese
, Romanian
, Russian
, Spanish
, Serbian
and Turkish
.
Corporation filed suit against Hotfile, Paypal
and 1,000 Hotfile 'John Doe' account holders. Liberty Media's case states that; the defendants “jointly and severally, with actual or constructive knowledge of or with willful blindness, reproduced and distributed certain LIBERTY-owned works through www.Hotfile.com.”.
Liberty are asking the court to seize Hotfile's domain address.
Liberty's case goes on to describe Hotfile as "[...] a Panamanian company with no physical presence there and one that takes steps to "obfuscate the facts of its location, address, and principals." It also states that "[...] Hotfile's owner is a Russian named Anton Titov, who may or may not be a resident of Bulgaria and/or The Netherlands, and who also may have a residence in Florida."
A company called Lemuria Communications is also listed as a defendant. The company is claimed by Liberty to be Hotfile's webhost and an alter ego of Anton Titov. Hotfile is said to operate servers in Dallas, Texas and Florida. PayPal
is also named as a defendant on the basis that it offers financial services to Hotfile, Titov and Lemuria. Liberty demands that the court freezes the defendants' assets held by PayPal
pending the outcome of the case.
Furthermore, Liberty states that "[Hotfile's] aim is "to profit from the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials, many of which are the intellectual property of LIBERTY," material which the studio says is placed there by "an army of assistants".
Liberty describes Hotfile as a massive copyright infringer which encourages affiliates to upload copyrighted material in order to attract further visitors to its website from which both the company and affiliates profit. With demands for a jury trial, Liberty Media claims Hotfile is guilty of inducing, contributory and vicarious infringement and is seeking statutory damages of $150,000 per infringed work.
Hotfile alleges that Warner has willingly taken down files without holding the copyrights, game demos and even open source software. The false takedowns continued even after the movie studio was repeatedly notified about the false claims.
“The single file deleted by Warner that had been most frequently downloaded by Hotfile users—five times more frequently than any other file—was a freeware software title wrongfully deleted by Warner," the suit states. "The software publisher that uploaded the file used Hotfile.com as a means for distribution of its open source software. Warner was not authorized by the software publisher to delete the file.”
“Not only has Warner (along with four other major motion picture studios) filed this unfounded and contrived litigation against Hotfile employing overly aggressive tactics, Warner has made repeated, reckless and irresponsible misrepresentations to Hotfile falsely claiming to own copyrights in material from Hotfile.com.”“Worse, Warner continued to make these misrepresentations even after Hotfile explicitly brought this rampant abuse to Warner’s attention, ruling out any possibility that its wrongful actions were accidental or unknowing,” Hotfile writes in its complaint.
Panama City
Panama is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Panama. It has a population of 880,691, with a total metro population of 1,272,672, and it is located at the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal, in the province of the same name. The city is the political and administrative center of the...
, Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
. Hotfile currently gets 23,000,000 monthly visitshttp://www.google.com/adplanner/site_profile#siteDetails?identifier=hotfile.com.
Usage
Hotfile allows users to upload and download files with any web browserWeb browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
. Non-registered users are allowed to upload up to 400 MB
Megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
at once. After a successful file upload, the user is given a unique URL which allows others to download the file. Non-registered users have to wait 15 seconds in the download queue and might need to enter a CAPTCHA and have to wait 30 minutes to download another file after a previous download session ends (even if the file did not download completely).
Features
The service has a Link Checker where users can enter file urls in order to check their current availability. There's also a Hotlink feature, which allows users to directly link to their files for an additional fee.Terms of use and Privacy Policy
The users under 13 years old are not allowed to use the service. HotFile is a service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. section 512 ("DMCA"). Hotfile responds to claims of copyright infringement reported to its designated copyright agent.In Hotfile's Privacy Policy under the 'Usage Data' section they state "We automatically collect usage information...type of Web browser you use, your operating system, your Internet Service Provider, your IP address, the links you use, and the time and duration of your use of the Service...be aware, however, that we may be required to disclose information such as your IP address which could be used by others to attempt to identify you." This is of concern to many Hotfile users that believe in proper privacy instead of logging every users actions. All of this data resides on US servers making it extremely easy for the courts to order Hotfile to hand it over. This policy of logging IP's and associating them with items downloaded is the completely opposite approach to website such as Fileserve and Rapidshare
RapidShare
RapidShare is a one-click hosting service that offers both free and commercial services. Operating from Switzerland, it is financed by the subscriptions of paying users...
.
Localization
The website is maintained in 19 languages, including Arabic, BulgariaBulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, two types of Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
and Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
.
Liberty Media Holdings Lawsuit: January 2011
On 6th January 2011, US Media conglomerate Liberty MediaLiberty Media
Liberty Media Corporation is an American media conglomerate and the control is exercised by company Chairman John C. Malone, who owns a majority of the voting shares....
Corporation filed suit against Hotfile, Paypal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
and 1,000 Hotfile 'John Doe' account holders. Liberty Media's case states that; the defendants “jointly and severally, with actual or constructive knowledge of or with willful blindness, reproduced and distributed certain LIBERTY-owned works through www.Hotfile.com.”.
Liberty are asking the court to seize Hotfile's domain address.
Liberty's case goes on to describe Hotfile as "[...] a Panamanian company with no physical presence there and one that takes steps to "obfuscate the facts of its location, address, and principals." It also states that "[...] Hotfile's owner is a Russian named Anton Titov, who may or may not be a resident of Bulgaria and/or The Netherlands, and who also may have a residence in Florida."
A company called Lemuria Communications is also listed as a defendant. The company is claimed by Liberty to be Hotfile's webhost and an alter ego of Anton Titov. Hotfile is said to operate servers in Dallas, Texas and Florida. PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
is also named as a defendant on the basis that it offers financial services to Hotfile, Titov and Lemuria. Liberty demands that the court freezes the defendants' assets held by PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
pending the outcome of the case.
Furthermore, Liberty states that "[Hotfile's] aim is "to profit from the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials, many of which are the intellectual property of LIBERTY," material which the studio says is placed there by "an army of assistants".
Liberty describes Hotfile as a massive copyright infringer which encourages affiliates to upload copyrighted material in order to attract further visitors to its website from which both the company and affiliates profit. With demands for a jury trial, Liberty Media claims Hotfile is guilty of inducing, contributory and vicarious infringement and is seeking statutory damages of $150,000 per infringed work.
Suit Against Warner Brothers
On 12th September 2011 the company filed a counterclaim accusing movie studio Warner Bros. of fraud and abuse. According to the complaint, Warner systematically misused the anti-piracy takedown tool (SRA) Hotfile had built for them.Hotfile alleges that Warner has willingly taken down files without holding the copyrights, game demos and even open source software. The false takedowns continued even after the movie studio was repeatedly notified about the false claims.
“The single file deleted by Warner that had been most frequently downloaded by Hotfile users—five times more frequently than any other file—was a freeware software title wrongfully deleted by Warner," the suit states. "The software publisher that uploaded the file used Hotfile.com as a means for distribution of its open source software. Warner was not authorized by the software publisher to delete the file.”
“Not only has Warner (along with four other major motion picture studios) filed this unfounded and contrived litigation against Hotfile employing overly aggressive tactics, Warner has made repeated, reckless and irresponsible misrepresentations to Hotfile falsely claiming to own copyrights in material from Hotfile.com.”“Worse, Warner continued to make these misrepresentations even after Hotfile explicitly brought this rampant abuse to Warner’s attention, ruling out any possibility that its wrongful actions were accidental or unknowing,” Hotfile writes in its complaint.