In what looks like a desperate preventive measure in reaction to the Megaupload shutdown, FileSonic has disabled all file-sharing capabilities and is now nothing more than a personal storage solution. It looks like the FBI’s scare tactic of going after the big fish in Megaupload is beginning to scare other file-sharing sites.
Along with FileSonic, Uploaded.to seems to have shuttered its services to the US as well. If committing suicide (or honourably dying like a samurai depending on your perspective) is the trend of these file-sharing sites, the shutdown of Megaupload will always be remembered as a dark, dark day for the internet. We’ll probably see how other file-sharing sites like RapidShare, MediaFire react to this news soon. [Filesonic -- Thanks Affan!]
Kay
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 11:17 AMI’m waiting to see how Filesonic will compensate to those who bought their membership with them.
Phil
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 11:53 AMI’m sure they’ll be happy to compensate those who had accounts with them and had never breached the terms of their account by for instance uploading or downloading copyright infringing material.
And I’m guessing they have detailed logs of everything that was done with an individual’s account.
So you should be getting your membership refund real soon /sarc
James
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 12:15 PMFile a paypal dispute and you’ll get your money back.
Prometheus
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 11:56 AMNo don’t give in you guys, don’t let the government fear you into submission… Otherwise, you’re giving them everything and then some of what they desire!
Turd
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 11:57 AMI was going to buy a yearly account with the, but instead picked the monthly one. This was about 2 weeks ago. Lucky I did so.
Ash
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 12:01 PMThough you would think that if they’d been operating illegally and the desire to prosecute them was there, then this wouldn’t make much of a difference.
bob
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 12:06 PMFilesonic is shit anyway. Long live MediaFire.
Michael
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 12:15 PMJust cancelled my account with them
GigZ333
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 12:21 PMNooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
GuruGuru
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 12:38 PMKilled my account as well….
Baba Booey
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 12:56 PMIf you cancel your account with them, do they offer prorated refunds?
crud
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 1:09 PMso the internet will become a wasteland after they’ve rolled through all sharing sites thanks US Gov, does that mean Youtube and social network is next?
Richard
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 4:18 PMWhy would they take down social networks?
Also Youtube I imagine has a far higher ratio of legitimate content than many of these file sharing networks, and they probably do more in a response to a complaint I imagine as well. I think the existence of Vevo on there which I believe is record backed would indicate they dont mind having content there, even if they want it to be provided through their channels.
UnknowablE
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 6:22 PMYou are kidding me right, youtube is easily 90% copyrighted songs, videoclips and other illegal things…
Hell and even if you count user created things like music videos, fan animations and let’s play game videos… They are all still violating copyright.
Fact is more people use youtube for getting songs illegally than they do free hosting sites and yup the film and music companies are the ones driving this the hardest.
Richard
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 10:23 PMYes, there is a fair bit of songs used without permission, but as I mentioned they do have legitimate companies using the service through the likes of Vivo and I’ve seen countless take downs.
Besides, I’m sure the record companies are far less concerned about a streaming service than they are a download one. While it’s possible to extract the audio from Youtube, I doubt it’s anywhere near as prolific as those using megaupload etc to get films etc.
Richard
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 10:28 PMI should add to that, while not technically ethical or anything, I imagine that for users listening to music on Youtube there is a far higher conversion rate into legitimate purchases through a retailer or whatever than there is for those that download a movie or application in it’s entirety as you would for a download service. After all, once you close the browser the music is typically gone as opposed to a downloaded video/application/game where you more or less end up with a 1:1 copy of what you will buy.
Whether that factors into music companies thinking or not I can’t say, but personally I imagine Youtube poses a much lower risk to a media companies bottom line that bittorrent/file sharing would.
Wok
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 1:30 PMDoes anyone remember bittorrent?
Bubba
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 2:14 PMThis is a sad day when we allow the idiots in Hollywood determine with who we share our digital media with. This started because Chris Dodds had too much time on his hands. Sad day for multimedia in general.
Richard
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 4:21 PMWell the issue is the services didn’t put enough in place to allow the industry to control how they could share THEIR own media. Love it or hate it, piracy was rampant on the service. Just as Napster would have had legitimate content back in the day, if a service doesn’t make enough strides to get rid of the illegal stuff then everyone loses out.
Gabriel
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 3:29 PMShit. I have an account with them… :( Find my pr0n elsewhere i guess
Bruce
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 3:34 PMI still don’t quite understand what they have done. Can’t a user upload content, and then give the necessary passwords to download those file/s without compromising the security of the uploader?
James Ray Cox
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 4:02 PMjust files a dispute claim, this is what they said:
Thank You for the Information Provided
Your item is not covered by PayPal Buyer Protection. Thus, we are not able to help you at this point.
However, if more claims are being filed against this seller within the next 180 days we will review this case more closely.
Please contact the seller directly to solve this case. We have to debit the reversal amount as well as a 5 EUR processing fee from your PayPal account.
Danny Bboy
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 5:31 PMJust filed a paypal dispute and got a full refund.
James Ray Cox
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 7:51 PMHi Danny,
You can see above the response I got from Paypal, that I could not get a refund, what were the details of your claim? I’m wondering why my claim was rejected. :/
Cheers.
M0les
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 10:33 PMSorry, who? Oh, never mind.
leber
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 1:10 AMyes, apple creates multi big file storage empire then suddenly all the big file sharing sites are being closed down or are too scared to keep their business model going. I guess I’m just another conspiracy theorist!!!
308
Monday, February 13, 2012 at 10:46 PMHopefully we’ll get some real warez links again, like ftp’s and http’s on scanned and tagged servers like we did it back before all these stupid file sharing sites started popping up. The links lasted much longer and it was free, like warez is meant to be. Hell I once downloaded a cam off a tagged ftp site on foxes own server.