Massive Copyright Infringement Suit Could Collapse Cyberlocker, Studio Warns

[ShareShiz]

Massive Copyright Infringement Suit Could Collapse Cyberlocker, Studio Warns
By enigmax

The plaintiffs in a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against a cyberlocker service are warning users of the site to back up their files. Corbin Fisher, the movie studio currently suing Oron for $34.8m, say that the file-hoster could collapse after a judge denied it access to additional funds to pay for their hosting. Is this another Megaupload-style data loss debacle in the making?

Less than two weeks ago, adult studio Corbin Fisher sued the operators of file-hosting service Oron for a cool $34.8 million, claiming that they induce the sharing of copyright infringing via their service.

?Oron is cognizant of its role as the vehicle in which infringers act in concert with one another to copy and distribute huge amounts of infringing material,? Corbin Fisher?s lawyers wrote, adding that since Oron only registered a DMCA agent in June 2011, it could not seek ?safe harbor? immunity for infringements made before that date.

The immediate effects of the suit were highly damaging for Oron. All company assets in the U.S. and Hong Kong were frozen and payment processors such as PayPal were ordered to stand down. Additionally, the file-hoster?s domain registrar was told to forbid any transfer of the Oron.com domain.

Of course, having no cash is a serious issue for any business, so Oron went back to court to ask for funds to be released to pay for legal expenses and operating costs. The file-hoster asked for roughly $375,000, but Judge Gloria M. Navarro couldn?t see her way clear to granting the full amount.

?Defendants do not provide any itemization or accounting for the Court to consider in making its determination if the amount requested is reasonable. Therefore, the Court authorizes $100,000 U.S. dollars to be released from Defendant?s PayPal account,? Navarro said.

But quickly Oron were back again asking for more money ? $355,000 in total. The company said that it needed to pay its hosting company, Netherlands-based LeaseWeb, $75,000 by last evening plus an additional payment of $280,000 by next Monday.

While Corbin Fisher?s language towards Oron has been predictably aggressive, comments and accusations leveled at LeaseWeb are bound to raise eyebrows. Challenging Oron?s need to make such large payments to LeaseWeb, Corbin Fisher?s lawyers directly accused LeaseWeb of conspiracy and/or extortion.

?The evidence put forth by [Oron] shows that these expenses fall far outside of the norm for the industry. Something is amiss. Either Oron is fabricating this newfound need for hundreds of thousands of dollars or LeaseWeb is conspiring with Oron,? XBIZ reports.

?Logic suggests that LeaseWeb is either colluding with Oron to assist Oron in removing hundreds of thousands of dollars from this court?s jurisdiction; extorting Oron; or Oron is not being entirely forthcoming with the court,? Corbin?s lawyers said.

And the criticism of LeaseWeb didn?t stop there. An investigator for the studio said that LeaseWeb is known to ??ignore DMCA notices or at the very least, minimize their impact.?

But Friday brought more bad news for Oron. Judge Gloria Navarro denied the request for extra funds, despite Oron?s warnings that without them their business would not be able to continue.

?If Oron?s servers are shut down for non-payment of those monthly hosting fees its users ? 99.9 percent of whom have no connection to this litigation ? will lose access to their data,? the company?s lawyers wrote.

Liberty Media, the owners of Corbin Fisher, were quick to pile on the pressure.

?This leads us to believe that Oron neither maintains nor is instituting any backup of user data. Therefore, if there are any legitimate users of Oron out there, Liberty Media Holdings advises them to back up any important files for which they are the proper owner or licensee,? the company wrote in a press release.

So while the lawyers fight, what we appear to be witnessing here is another Megaupload data-loss debacle in the making, in which completely innocent individuals could lose access to their cloud-stored data due to someone else?s legal problems.

But perhaps what is of most concern to Joe Public right now is that despite warning the court that without funds the site could close, Oron have zero warnings on their site or information on the issues the company faces.

Of course, there?s a fine line between causing panic and keeping people informed, and indeed the company may be quietly confident that it will ride out the storm, but people should have the option to take precautionary backups, However, they won?t do that if they don?t think anything is amiss.

ShareShiz Reviewed by ShareShiz on 2nd Jul 2012. Massive Copyright Infringement Suit Could Collapse Cyberlocker, Studio Warns Massive Copyright Infringement Suit Could Collapse Cyberlocker, Studio Warns By enigmax The plaintiffs in a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against a cyberlocker service are warning users of the site to back up their files. Corbin Fisher, the movie studio currently suing Oron for $34.8m, say that the file-hoster could collapse after a judge denied it access to additional funds to pay for their hosting. Is this another Megaupload-style data loss debacle in the making? Rating: 5

[JmZ]

Not bad, not bad at all.

Maybe it'll knock some sense into these filehosts who think they can get away with paying people to upload pirated content.

[JGM]

^ +1,000,000!

It's about time cashwhores vanished!

JGM.

[Eli0t]

i never liked Oron but this is yet another attack on safe harbor principles. next stop mediafire and then where will free users be. these people wont stop untill every filehost is removed from the internet, welcome to your corporate controlled internet nightmare.

[Gavo]

This site is using a hacked database of W junction

[foxman]

Not bad, not bad at all.

Maybe it'll knock some sense into these filehosts who think they can get away with paying people to upload pirated content.

^ +1,000,000!

It's about time cashwhores vanished!

JGM.

........Elsewhere, cashwhore filehosts feeds family at home.


Don't you judge me, I used to upload for fun/sharing , then i got greedy, made some extra pocket money with it, then I got back to uploading for fun again.

[Kw3rLn]

This guys want to get rid of every filehost is out there.

[JmZ]

i never liked Oron but this is yet another attack on safe harbor principles. next stop mediafire and then where will free users be. these people wont stop untill every filehost is removed from the internet, welcome to your corporate controlled internet nightmare.

None of these paying filehosts belong under safe harbour protection. They are directly funding pirates to force traffic increase because nobody would visit their sites otherwise.

If they didn't pay uploaders, they would be dead, they would have no traffic at all, they would be losing money every day.

........Elsewhere, cashwhore filehosts feeds family at home.

Worst, reason, ever. To these people who give this excuse, I say: do something productive, get a real job and stop being a bum.

[Storming]

Filehosts should of stopped the Affiliate programs etc along time ago -- But lets face it people saw MegaUpload go down and thought SHIT I CAN BE THE NEXT MEGAUPLOAD AND MAKE LOTS OF MONIES...

1 went down, another 200 Domains &xfilehosting licenses will be bought.
Just how it works these days... Same as any other well known sites people want to copy.

........Elsewhere, cashwhore filehosts feeds family at home.
^^ I'll just go sell crack to pregnant ladies so I can live then yeah..?

[WDF]

I would like to see the others learn from this but they won't. I said it in January that eventually the payment processors would have to close the cyber-locker accounts that offer ppd affy programs. I expected it sooner then now and this is only because of the legal actions. More will get suspended or terminated until none that remain offer ppd.

When they can no longer find a way to go after the hosts then the uploaders and down-loaders will become targets.

PayPal may have to surrender payment records for both payments to and from Oron, what will all these uploaders and premium account purchasers do when they start getting summons and demand letters.

Before anyone says they can't or won't do it you need to do a shipload of research. Directv and Dish Network used this strategy in North America to make more money through anti-piracy efforts then they did through subscriptions. It will apply here and across the globe because it involves financial institutions and their regulations.

All it will take is a court order for payment processor disclosure in any of these legal actions to get it started. Then the information becomes public record and everyone with a potential claim will have your information.

You can believe you will be immune for whatever your reason but when it comes to transferring funds there is always some kind of paper trail.