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Hollywood studios are calling on the courts to force the popular file-sharing site Hotfile offline following similar action against Megaupload.

Court papers unsealed this week reveal that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has filed a motion for a summary judgement.

If approved, the move could lead to action against the service without the need for a lengthy trial.

Hotfile says it removes copyright-infringing files on request.

Details of the development were revealed by Mediapost News and the Torrentfreak blog.

It marks the latest step in the Hollywood’s year-long legal effort to have Hotfile shut down.

The court papers name Disney, 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros as the plaintiffs.

They claim that “Hotfile actively fosters the massive copyright infringement that fuels its business”, adding that “more than 90% of the files downloaded from Hotfile are copyright infringing, and nearly every Hotfile user is engaged in copyright infringement”.

The studios claim that Hotfile’s business model is “indistinguishable” from that of Megaupload and draw attention to its affiliate programme.

This offered users payments based on how many times their files had been downloaded. The studios claim this encouraged “the uploading of <<popular>> [i.e. infringing] content”.

Hollywood studios are calling on the courts to force the popular file-sharing site Hotfile offline following similar action against Megaupload

Hollywood studios are calling on the courts to force the popular file-sharing site Hotfile offline following similar action against Megaupload

Panama-based Hotfile has claimed safe harbor protections under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

These offer sites immunity if they take down illegal material when asked and protect services such as YouTube from being forced offline if a member uploads someone else’s video.

However, the studios claim Hotfile does not qualify because it did not identify, keep track of or “terminate” repeat offenders. The movie makers say their own efforts to identify repeat offenders found that some had received 300 or more infringement notices.

The studios add that nearly all of Hotfile’s top affiliates who had received payments “were egregious repeat offenders”.

Hotfile website notes that it has made changes to “facilitate the identification of repeat infringers” and goes on to say it has become “more aggressive” about terminating accounts.

Hotfile adds that it has installed new “fingerprint” technology to block copyrighted files from being uploaded and has also changed the way its affiliate payments are calculated.

Although the case against Megaupload has yet to go to trial, the Media Industry Blog’s Mark Mulligan said the fact the site had been taken offline had given copyright holders fresh impetus to target other digital locker services.

“These lockers are the easiest target to hit to take out a very sizeable chunk of the piracy market,” Mark Mulligan said.

“If the service providers are serious about wanting to heed the industry’s concerns then instead of assuming that all of the content is legitimate until found otherwise, they should actually assume that most of the content is illegal and take action.

“Much of the content on these service is very high quality video files – how many consumers genuinely create large high definition videos of their own and upload them?”

However, Mark Mulligan warned that even if the studios succeed in shutting other lockers down – the victory might be short-lived.

“Closing such sites down will undoubtedly be a body blow to piracy, but the history of music piracy shows us that every time you close something down it’s like a game of digital whack-a-mole – another one pops up.”

 

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Specialists announce that the sun is today bombarding Earth with radiation from the biggest solar storm in almost seven years, with more to come from the fast-moving eruption.

The solar storm occurred at about 11: 00 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday and will hit Earth with three different effects at three different times.

The biggest issue is radiation, which is mostly a concern for satellite disruptions and astronauts in space. It can cause communication problems for polar-travelling aeroplanes, experts said.

Radiation from Sunday’s flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will probably continue through until Wednesday, experts say. Levels are considered strong but other storms have been more severe.

There are two higher levels of radiation on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s storm scale of “severe” and “extreme”, space weather centre physicist Doug Biesecker said.

This storm is the strongest for radiation since May 2005. The radiation – in the form of protons – came flying out of the sun at 93 million miles per hour.

“The whole volume of space between here and Jupiter is just filled with protons and you just don’t get rid of them like that,” Doug Biesecker said, explaining why the effects will stick around for a couple of days.

Radiation from Sunday's flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will probably continue through until Wednesday

Radiation from Sunday's flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will probably continue through until Wednesday

NASA’s flight surgeons and solar experts examined the solar flare’s expected effects.

They decided that the six astronauts on the International Space Station do not have to do anything to protect themselves from the radiation, spokesman Rob Navias said.

A solar eruption is followed by a one-two-three punch, said Antti Pulkkinen, a physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Catholic University.

First comes electromagnetic radiation, followed by radiation in the form of protons. Then, finally the coronal mass ejection – that’s the plasma from the sun itself – hits.

Usually that travels at about 1 or 2 million miles per hour, but this storm is particularly speedy and is shooting out at 4 million miles per hour, Doug Biesecker said.

Plasma causes much of the noticeable problems on Earth, such as electrical grid outages. In 1989, a solar storm caused a massive blackout in Quebec. It can also pull the northern lights further south.

But this coronal mass ejection seems likely to be only moderate, with a chance for becoming strong, Doug Biesecker said. The worst of the storm is likely to go north of Earth.

And unlike last October, when a freak solar storm caused auroras to be seen as far south as Alabama, the northern lights aren’t likely to dip too far south this time, Doug Biesecker said.

Parts of New England, upstate New York, northern Michigan, Montana and the Pacific Northwest could see an aurora but not until Tuesday evening, he said.

For the past several years the sun had been quiet. Part of that was the normal calm part of the sun’s 11-year cycle of activity.

Last year, scientists started to speculate that the sun was going into an unusually quiet cycle that seems to happen maybe once a century or so.

Now that super-quiet cycle doesn’t seem as likely, Doug Biesecker said. Scientists watching the sun with a new NASA satellite launched in 2010 – during the sun’s quiet period – are excited.

“We haven’t had anything like this for a number of years,” Antti Pulkkinen said. “It’s kind of special.”

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