The latest MPAA lawsuit sees the industry lobby, who represents the biggest studios in Hollywood, sue Internet file hosting company Hotfile. Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, Columbia and Twentieth Century Fox are all named as co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
The MPAA alleges that Hotfile not only hosts infringing content, movies such as "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," "The Social Network" and "The Town", but also actively encourages users to upload pirated content.
"Instead of terminating infringing users, Hotfile compensates them for their infringement. Ultimately, defendants do not take any meaningful steps to curtail infringement on Hotfile because they want and need that infringement to make their business profitable," the MPAA lawyers wrote in their submitted legal documents.
"The theft taking place on Hotfile is unmistakable. Their files are indeed 'hot', as in 'stolen'. It’s wrong and it must stop, " added Daniel Mandil, general counsel & chief content protection officer for the MPAA.
Google recently started filtering file hosting related keywords as part of its own plans to appease the movie industry, which has increasingly turned on the search engine giant for not doing enough to combat online piracy. Interestingly, the keyword "hotfile" was not one of the keywords that Google now censors for its auto-complete/instant search recommendations, even though competitors "rapidshare" and "megaupload" have been censored.
Do you think the MPAA is right in taking action against a notorious piracy source, or do you think that Hotfile should not be fully responsible for the actions of its users? Post your answer in our comments section, or in this forum thread:
http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=94537
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