Webmaster, File Host Interview: UltraMegaBit 11/11/13

[To0]

With all of the ongoing chitter chatter being directed towards UMB in recent times (or for the whole year really), I felt that it would be extremely appropriate to ask him to take an interview. Gladly he accepted and we were able to come away with the most extensive interview to date.You will be able to enter the world of UMB for yourself and get an idea of what the owner was actually thinking prior to it’s creation, during and after. Future plans of the site and the direction the site is heading in today.
UltraMegaBit is one of the largest file hosting companies in the world, currently ranked at 15k on Alexa. However this company boasts over 600TB of stored files! That in itself is an impressive feat.
With no further ado. We present… UltraMegaBit.com – The Owner & His Story.

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Can you give us a brief background/bio on yourself?

Hello ScrollDog! It’s a bit of an honor to be asked for an interview, and am quite surprised that you contacted me. A little background about myself. I’ve been running online businesses / websites since around the year 2000, some have been very successful, and some have not.

What name would you say everyone knows you by online?

I don’t really have an online persona. I’m more of a lurker when it comes to forums or social networking. But I guess now. Everyone knows me as UMB Support, or UltraMegaBit.

Where are you from?

I was born and raised in Southern California.

What company do you own?

I run the website UltraMegaBit.com

When did you create UltraMegaBit?

I created the website UltraMegaBit.com around March of 2012.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

It started out as sort of just an idea/hobby between myself, and one of my buddies, who is my coder. We wanted to bring something new to the world of online file hosting scripts. We were originally planning to just write the software to sell it, but then realized it would be way too much work for him and I to ever complete with a limited budget, and limited resources. Pretty much all of the larger sites use some cookie cutter script, with technology that is outdated. We were chatting one day, and he said he could create a script which is 10x better than that xfs filehosting script that everyone was using. So, a little over a year and a half later, with many sleep deprived days and a lot of money poured into this site, we have UltraMegaBit as it stands today.

Your company has seen excessive growth over the past 6 months. Is this just word of mouth or does your service offer something that some of your competitors don’t?

We like to think our site has grown due to the stability of our network, and our coding. And also by running our affiliate program the way it should be ran. With timely payouts, and accurate accounting of sales or downloads.

How many files would you say you have uploaded across your network?

We have around 600TB of active files currently on our system.

How many DMCA complaints have you received this year?

UltraMegaBit is a public service provider, and at times our services are abused, as is every other public service provider. We receive roughly about 20-30 takedown requests per day. A lot of them are from bots that copyright agents run, and do not verify, so a lot of them are invalid, as the content has been removed prior to them resending.

In comparison to other hosting companies that seems relatively low. Why is it that there are individuals who consistently proclaim that your service is Pro-Piracy?

There are individuals that claim we are pro-piracy because they are searching for infringing files, and abuse on our system. If that is what you are searching for, that is what you are going to find. If you search dropbox or mediafire, for infringing files, that is obviously what you are going to find. People abuse public free services.

Some of these reports, namely StopFileLockers have gone on record nearly a dozen times in the past year alone stating that your company is soon to perish. Is there any truth to this?

There is no truth to his statements whatsoever.

Why do you think these things are being said about your company?

These things are being said about my company because I have always been really vocal towards the person running the campaign “Robert King”. And he is pretty upset because I have always countered his claims and stories that he fabricates with the truth. He was really upset with me when I made it known on the forum where his campaign is ran out of money, that he has accepted pretty large donations from the adult industry’s #1 enemy. Fabian from Manwin. So you see, it does not look good, when you say you’re an anti-piracy operation, but you are accepting large donations from the company that owns the majority of all major adult tube sites in the world. Almost all of them are loaded with copyright infringing materials. He says the donation doesn’t mean that Manwin are off the hook from enforcement by his company, but until this date, not one of Manwin properties were the focus of any enforcement by Robert or SFL. This caused a big stir on the forum because a lot of his supporters didn’t know that he had taken money from that company. Why would you accept money from your #1 enemy, and look the other way because you received a payoff from them? That is what a lot of the forum members were talking about anyway. He doesn’t like to be challenged, pretty much, he has it in for me, because I made him look like a fool, and let everyone know that he was in it for the money, and not to ‘help’ these Webmasters. Sometime last year, we tried using PayPal to accept payments for about a week, just because we wanted to see what the big deal about it was. We wanted to see if our sales somehow magically skyrocketed, as opposed to processing sales ourselves. Well, the truth is, it did not make any difference to us using PayPal. He managed to have our PayPal account terminated, since we weren’t pre-approved by PayPal, and he thought this was a monumental victory on his end. Well, 2 days later, our PayPal account was back, and we were not going to accept payouts with it anymore, as we did not want to go through PayPal’s approval process, as they pretty much want to monitor all files that are uploaded to your service. We don’t even do that, so why should we allow PayPal to do that? If we monitored user uploads, then we would not have DMCA Safe harbor.

Does it have anything to do with the fact that WDF and you had a personal falling out?

That could be another reason. Him and WDF might be working together to try and close UltraMegaBit.com down, as I have read a few times some negative posts WDF has posted about myself, and the company.

Can you describe your relationship with WDF for us? What was it like, how did it form and what caused there to be a separation?

I met WDF (real name Pete Bronson) on the forum WJunction around august of last year. He was extremely helpful in enforcing the forums rules on people abusing our support thread. Somehow I got his contact information, and we began chatting on Skype. Well a few weeks later, we had some issues with supporting users on the WJ site, so UMB had closed our official support thread. As it turns out during that time WDF was banned somehow from WJ. So we began chatting, and he would tell me how he was so broke, and was 6 months late on his rent and was to be evicted anytime. He mentioned how someone came in his house and robbed him for his rent money. I felt very sorry for the guy because we had some great chats, and he seemed like a genuine friend. So he was mentioning that he wanted to start a forum like WJ but ran a different way. I volunteered to help him out with funding the site, so I gave him the money to buy the domain, and the vBulletin license. He had a few domain names as ideas, but ultimately, I came up with the domain name uploader talk.com, he liked it, and registered it, and from then on, he did all the rest. He built the forum, and so on. UMB had a support thread at UT since the beginning, and of course we didn’t have to pay anything because we funded the whole site. He started to get other File Hosts on board with a subscription style agreement to have their very own threads there, which are fully moderated by the file host. I was happy for him because I thought he would start earning some money to pay his rent and have some food, and he would stop dropping hints to me that he wanted me to send him cash. So for a while it was cool. As you can imagine, I’ve put a lot of money and time into the UltraMegaBit site, and we started to lose traffic by removing our thread from WJ, because at that time we were still pretty much in the infancy stages of the company. So I opened the thread back at WJ, and didn’t tell him. I didn’t feel I had to tell him. It’s business, and I don’t have to answer to him, he’s not part of the company. But I started to notice some weird things from this person. He would send me strange messages if I didn’t message him frequently. He had ADD or something. Like if you didn’t communicate with him, he would get very upset, and angry. It was kind of like if you had a girlfriend and you haven’t called her for a few days. You know? Well, he found out that I had a thread at WJ, not that I was hiding it or anything. Just didn’t see any reason that he had to know about it. Boy, did this upset him. He exploded. He was saying things like “no wonder you don’t offer support at UT, as you’re taking all your time supporting users at WJ”. UMB was doing support at both sites, and in fact have hired someone to help me support both forums. He was cursing me out, and telling me things like “how can I do this to him”, and “he was going to ruin me, my family, and my business if it’s the last thing he did”. A few days later, he made a blog post about how I was an awful person and could not be trusted, and that we didn’t have the funds to keep the company going, so anyone earning with UMB should not trust us, and beware. He left the thread open, but just put his statement in the main thread saying that UT will not be responsible if UMB does not pay its affiliates. A few weeks later he closed the thread altogether, and just opened a new thread stating that UMB has been banned for violating an exclusive contract with UT. This blew my mind, because it felt like an argument with a deranged woman. So I was like whoa. Get me outta here. I cut ties with him, and never looked back. Fact of the matter is, the person has issues. He is like a 15 year old boy in a 60 year olds body.

In regards to the recent HoneyPot hoax, why do you think WDF did this? What do you believe was the real reason he was forced into making such an untimely announcement?

That whole honeypot thing was hilarious. He was probably losing his clients at UT, since they probably didn’t get any traffic from the site, or new affiliates, so they figured why keep paying here when we can just have a free thread at WJ, and actually get affiliates.
After his friend WD gave him db dumps from all of his hacks, he was trying to find people to sell them to, he sold the db exported as e-mail lists to a few filehosts so that they could spam all the WJ members to join their filehost in hopes of gaining affiliates.
I believe that he sold the db to a few anti-piracy operations as well. He gave Robert King a copy of the WJ database. I’m not sure what other databases he gave him, but Robert King says’s he’s making a major push on attacking uploaders payout paypal accounts. To me a major push sounds like more than 1 or 2 accounts that he collected from screenshots at WJ, so obviously he has some databases of filehosts that were hacked by WD, as WD hacked a bunch of XFS sites that were vulnerable to an exploit.
Pete seen there was money in having this type of information ,and with his other businesses failing, and now UT failing, he approached WD to start nukepiracy , WD hacks vulnerable vbulletin exploits of warez / porn forums, then Pete can approach rightsholders with IP addresses, and email addresses of the people who are uploading their content to these forums., as he had the identities of people uploading. Easy money right?

We see screenshots circulating around the web of files that allegedly contain some of the most unimaginable content on your service. These files are also claimed to be on nearly every other file hosting company that is being targeted any more. Why does this happen? Are these files really uploaded? Or is this just an easy way for individuals to damnify your company?

There is no real way to find out if these files are really uploaded, or truly infringing, or illegal because Robert never submits a takedown notice, as it would be illegal for him to do so, since he does not represent any companies, nor is he a rights holder. It is kind of strange that the screenshots of these files never have the URL, and the filenames are the same exact filenames of infringing files on other hosts that he screenshots and posts.

In the event that a user does upload an infringing file and you receive a DMCA report, what is the process that you take?

As soon as we get the report, immediately, we remove access to the public, and send a notice to the person who uploaded the file, so that they may file a counterclaim if they believe this is a false DMCA report.

How long does this process usually take for you to respond?

We do not respond to the submitter, as it is not required by law, but we take action within 24-48h of receiving the notice.

What if someone were to come to your site and use your service for the worst possible reasons. CP, Animal Abuse and so forth. What is your policy regarding this kind of heinous content?

We obvious don’t allow our services to be used for the distribution of this disgusting content. UltraMegaBit does not monitor file uploads, nor do we search the web for this disgusting content, as that is illegal in itself. If we receive a complaint or notification from a law enforcement agency, or any valid agency for that matter, we have an account at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which we submit the data to them, and they investigate the sick individual(s).

Being that you’re one of the top 50 largest file hosts in the world, I can understand why you have a lot of individuals breathing down your back. It comes with the territory. What are some things that you think you’ve done differently to help your business get to where it is today?

I believe that just running the business honestly, and professionally is how we got to where we are now.

Where is your business hosted?

UltraMegaBit.com is hosted at Choopa in New Jersey.
So you’re company is located in the United States. How exactly is that possible? All of these allegations of misconduct, abusive content and a complete disregard for DMCA law surely you would have had some issues by now.
This is possible because contrary to all the lies that Robert spreads on his blog, we actually are 100% compliant with DMCA. In fact we act within 24 hours in most cases. That is pretty fast compared to the time it takes some of the other larger companies to respond to DMCA complaints. If we were as he says, a rogue filehosting site, and did not comply with DMCA, there is NO WAY that choopa would allow us to host with them, and there is no way that our registrar would allow us to keep our domain name.

Why do you think there is this massive stereotype against all File Hosts in general? We’ve seen a small movement gain some serious notoriety and backers, yet they have no end. According to SFL it’s almost like every single File Host is illegal.

It’s all propaganda. Just think of the Nazi’s in Germany. Their leader had them believing the worst, just because he wanted the world to run his way. Just like Robert King. The majority of hosts he is attacking are DMCA Compliant. It’s just that he wants us to run our company the way he wants us to. Even though we follow the law’s, that is not good enough for him. He thinks that file lockers are responsible for how people use them. Look at gun companies. Are they responsible for all the people that are murdered with weapons? Sorry bad analogy, but you get what I’m saying.

You mentioned something earlier when we were on the phone speaking. You said that one of his largest contributors is actually someone who owns an illegal file sharing site himself. Can you give us more details about that?

I cannot confirm this 100% but I’ve been following the SFL project since the beginning and before Manwin gave him the very large donation, he was posting that he found some file hosting properties owned by Manwin. I am not too sure on the name of that site.

So would it be fair to say that this is one illegal industry trying to shut down potential competition to reap more rewards? Essentially wiping out the competition J.P. Morgan style.

Somewhat, but I’m not saying that the file locker owned by Manwin is illegal, I’m only suggesting that SFL is not targeting Manwins properties because of the large contribution made by them. So, in essence, you can pay him to look the other way. I think this is referred to as a protection racket.

What have you done to try and make things better? Have you done any press-releases or promotional events to endorse positive anti-piracy sharing?

The only thing we have done is to be very diligent in handling all DMCA takedown requests we receive and banning repeat offenders when we find them. The only problem is, that you don’t need an account to use our service, so they use proxies, and VPN’s to keep abusing our service once we ban their IP’s/e-mail addresses.

Something that gets brought up a lot is the fact that the safe DMCA Safe harbor provision is nullified once you pay your affiliates. Is this true? Have you sought out legal advice to ensure that you are within the legal guidelines of this?

This is not true. We have sought legal advice to make sure we are in the guidelines. We do not know what affiliates upload, nor do we monitor what they upload as we cannot, or we do not maintain Safe Harbor.

WJunction.com seems to get brought up a lot in various conversations in the file sharing world. Obviously because they allow companies to come and share their plans. But other than that, the site isn’t publicly nor privately endorsing this type of behavior. In fact it’s explicitly condoned and people are banned immediately. What is the real reason behind this?

WJunction is brought up a lot because they allow File Hosts to post support threads on their site to support their end users. Since WJunction is a webmaster forum, it is beneficial to them since many Webmasters earn money by monetizing their unique content by uploading to File Hosts.

You’re company seems to be doing really well and I would like to wish you the best of luck with your future endeavors. Where do you see your company in a year from now?

Thank you. In a year from now, we just hope to see UMB continuing with it’s growth.

Do you think there is anything that you can do to help File Hosting companies such as yourself clear the bad name? As your business continues to grow the threats are probably only going to continue to increase. Do you foresee any possible legal action taken to protect your company? Or are there alternative measures that you have or will have put in place in the near future that we aren’t aware of?

Every File Host runs their business a different way, so I can’t really tell them how to operate, as my business methods may not apply to them.
We cannot really foresee what will happen in regards to threats, but that we will deal with them on a case by case basis.
We have legal representation in place to protect us should we ever need it.

For those who are reading this and thinking of following in your footsteps, what kind of advice would you give them?

I would tell them to be ready for a lot of sleepless nights. I would also tell them to make sure that you operate within the law. UltraMegaBit wants to stress that we are not against helping out content creators. In fact, we are fully behind them, and will do our best to remove the content when it is reported to us in a timely manner. We also have a tool which content owners can utilize in which they can remove the content on their own. We are just against companies like Robert Kings Stop File Lockers, as he want’s us to operate within the law, but yet he breaks the law all in the name of copyright. We don’t feel that is right, so we will not support him, nor will we cooperate with him or his organization.

What are some of your hobbies?

I haven’t really had a lot of time for hobbies these past 2 years, being a family man and father is my number one priority but some of my hobbies are restoring classic cars and motorcycles, and of course gaming.

Any final words, remarks you would like to leave?

I would just like to stress, that if you run an online business, and are operating within the law, don’t let others dictate to you how to run your business. It’s your dream. Pursue it, and don’t let anyone stand in your way!

What do you think of ScrollDog.com?

I have just stumbled across ScrollDog about a month ago, and have read all the articles published so far. It is an awesome site, and I really love the style of the writer. I like how they actually do research, and actually post the truth, unlike other sites, who just post what they are told. Remember all those sites that actually posted a story on UploaderTalk being a honeypot. LMAO

What do you think of WJunction.com?

I really only have a support thread at WJunction and don’t really browse through the rest of the forum. In the beginning, I had some issues with them, as competing FileHosts would post lies in my thread disguised as end users, and I could not really get any help from the admins, and in fact was given a warning for some reports made by these users. But since reopening our support thread there, I have had no issues with the admins, nor any of the users, and in fact I think it’s a really professionally ran site. I think there are a lot of resources that Webmasters can utilize at their site, and they have a big following.

Interview taken on 11/11/13​

 

[iAmDjMAD]

i bet how these filehosts delete content without verifying dmca reports. lol
nice work Dawg.

 

[Krack3r]

thumbs up UMB Support for proving that WDF doesn't run a honey pot but a big mouth.

 

[Peter South]

Interesting reading this I've been an Ultramegabit affiliate for a couple weeks now and have had a very successful start to our affiliation.

What I like most about Ultramegabit is the end-user look and feel of the site. There are too many file hosts out there (even on this board) that have no clue what they're doing. All it takes is some moron to get a hold of XFS and they suddenly think they have a secure file hosting service. I have never found a file host that runs XFileSharingPro that fully knows what they're doing from a technical standpoint and/or how to run a business.

Ultramegabit's responsive CSS theme based on the Twitter Bootstrap 3 shows that they are the most modern of file hosts and this is very helpful with the conversion process which in turn results in more affiliate sales. I've also spoken with the "coder" referenced in this interview at great length, and given my own professional career in building and managing Petabyte sized file systems I can tell you that these guys really know what they're doing. No script kiddies are running this file host, thats for sure.

Glad to say that I am a Ultramegabit affiliate and a special thank you to WJunction for providing the venue for which I was introduced to their excellent service.