Copyright Infringement on One-click Hosts and Streaming Sites
Increasing broadband penetration and speed, as well as the availability of relatively cheap hosting and hardware, has seen a shift in copyright infringement on the internet to so-called one-click hosts and streaming sites. Peer-to-peer, decentralized networks developed when internet speeds made the downloading of large files difficult. Now that internet connections are very fast in comparison to the dial-up days, and widely available (even on wireless devices), it is feasible to distribute very large files through a website from a centralized host. So rather than a website simply indexing Torrent seed files that would have to be downloaded into the user's Torrent client to be able to download the media file, the user is able to download the media file directly from the website, bypassing the P2P/Torrent networks altogether.
One of the most well-known examples of a one-click host is Megaupload, which was shuttered by the FBI in 2012 after internal company documents were revealed that showed a pattern of conspiracy to commit and encourage copyright infringement on a massive scale, and for monetary gain. Megaupload was hugely popular with file pirates before it was shut down: it was estimated to have had upwards of 50 million daily visitors and to have made $600,000 USD per day. Near the end of 2011, it boasted 180 million registered users and accounted for 1% of all internet traffic in North America. The scale of the problem is obviously immense.
Fortunately, there are measures that copyright owners can take to combat the mass copyright infringement occurring on one-click hosts and streaming sites. Most of these sites comply with the DMCA, so it is possible for a copyright owner or their attorney to send a takedown notice to the registered agent for the site, and the safe harbor process of the DMCA begins. Even sites located outside of the U.S. are complying with the DMCA, because they want to be able to operate and profit from online advertising in the U.S. The DMCA safe harbor provisions were designed to address almost precisely the situation of copyrighted material hosted or streamed on websites (think YouTube).
For a fairly popular product, it is not surprising to see tens to hundreds of thousands of links where the product is available for download or streaming. For the copyright owner, finding even a few links on their own can be disheartening, knowing that they are being ripped off so blatantly. But how do you go about finding all of those other, potentially thousands of links and sending out the takedown notices? You don't have to, we can take care of everything for you. Using custom-built software to scour the entire internet on a daily basis, we can find every single link on one-click hosts and streaming sites where your product is available for unlicensed download or viewing, and send out takedown notices to each and every host/site. Most hosts/sites respond to the takedown notice within twenty-four hours and remove your product. With the daily scans, you can nearly or completely eliminate the availability of your product on these sites. Please feel free to contact Boden Davidson today to get the best and most advanced legal protection for your products on the internet.