File Sharing In the Post MegaUpload Era

[Daniel]

This report looks at file sharing in the post MegaUpload era. The main finding — file sharing did not go away. It did not even decrease much in North America. Mainly, file sharing became staggeringly less efficient. Instead of terabytes of North America MegaUpload traffic going to US servers, most file sharing traffic now comes from Europe over far more expensive transatlantic links.

http://blog.deepfield.net/

 

[Long]

Interesting, not a bad article.

Thanks Oj.

 

[foxman]

Very Interesting Read, thanks

 

[ilyathereis]

An era? It hasn't been even 1 month since Megaupload shutdown and the other filehosts (i.e. Fileserve, Filesonic, et al) freaked out. There are no clearly defined leaders yet. It remains to be seen whether people will converge to download from 2 to 3 rising filehosts or if the field will look as sporadic and undistinguished as it seems today.

 

[Mr Happy]

This is only data for North America. Is North America the only country in the world? What about countries such as India (who is second to America in Internet Users but growing faster) who downloads more illegal content. It would be far more relevant to show this data as it's not a premier or Gold country as seen by file hosts due to the large amounts it downloads.

The other MASSIVE area they are ignoring is Europe. Rapidshare and other file hosts are located in central Europe so download speeds can be faster to European countries from these file hosts illiminating the need for more expensive "transatlantic links".

This isn't a global report but warez as we all know is global.

 

[nICEsHARE]

Great read to me.

 

[Daniel]

Actually you have to set a limit somewhere. Moving from the file outwards, the first steps are now clear:

1) Hosting the file: BAD
2) Linking to the file: BAD
3) Running a portal with links to files: BAD
4) Linking to a portal with links to files: BAD
5) Running a portal with links to trackers that links to pieces of the files: BAD (mostly)
6) Linking to a portal with links to trackers that links to pieces of the files: Still okay
7) Running a portal with links to a hash values (magnet links): Still okay
8) Linking to a portal with links to a hash values (magnet links): Still okay

The magnet links are a in a grey zone. You can argue that a link to a hash value is useless without third party resources, and thus that it in itself in no way can be said to be illegal in itself.