UPDATED 13:41 EDT / SEPTEMBER 14 2011

NEWS

Hotfile Turns the Tables, Fires Back at Warner Bros.

News about RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) or MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) filing legal cases against P2P developers, companies, and users does not surprise me at all. This scenario is already considered a norm in the industry. But never did I imagine that the chase would take a full 360 degree turn and the persecutor before is now the alleged culprit. This is what happening now to Hotfile as they sue Warner Bros. for fraud and abuse, according to a torrentfreak article.

A parcel of the complaint read from the same article said:

“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.”

This suit slapped by Hotfile against Warner Bros. seems more like revenge rather than a case borne out of outright violations. It can be remembered that early part of this year, it was Hotfile that is facing big trouble before the court of law versus five Hollywood studios. It was just recently when Hotfile was ordered to share data with the MPAA to ensure that they are not engaging and making money out of copyright infringements. The grounds for file-sharing site’s complaints were fraud and the abuse of anti-piracy tool and taking down files including open source software.

SiliconANGLE.com has followed various copyright infringement cases involving MPAA and RIAA. Late last year when World Intellectual Property Organization leader Larry Lessig stressed that copyright system will never be completely implemented on the Internet. It was fourth quarter of 2010 when anti-piracy advocates scored big when LimeWire was permanently taken out of circulation—a move that caused a significant decline in P2P piracy. And even months following its forced closure, LimeWire was still haunted by trouble when an Indie label sued them for breach of agreement. MPAA Bulldog and Dutch ant-piracy firm BREIN opened 2011 by shuttering over a dozen of US Torrent sites. In August, some 200,000 BitTorrent users in the US were slapped with copyright violations.

The widespread use of the internet and the uncontrollable liberty within this sphere are really the primary challenges why anti-piracy campaigns are not that successful. One of the solutions experts thought of is placing copyright alerts. Some then-perpetrators of online piracy have redirected their course and are now trying to abide the law. Pirate Bay founders just launched a file-hosting site that is copyright-friendly.


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