Well, Megaupload died. Everyone should know about it by now.
Problem though is that the cyberlockers are now running in fear. Filesonic is no longer offering any services - problem as they're one of my mirrors. Also uploaded.to is blocking the US - and whilst I don't use them, considering that blocking the US is probably a correct way to remove yourself from the jurisdiction of the FBI, I can see other cyberlockers following suit.
Now small rant upcoming (don't want to read, skip to the next paragraph): I think the US exceeded its jurisdiction (getting a German national arrested in New Zealand seems a little over reaching). However, it seems Kim Dotcom (probably - pending trial to establish facts) deserved it. By all accounts it does seem that Megaupload was not responding to requests by copyright holders to remove files, so he was (probably) one of the "bad guys" in the copyright debate. I'm definitely against piracy, as I am a content creator under other names, and if the reports are true on Megaupload then it probably deserved to be shutdown. But arresting a non-national in a foreign jurisdiction seems excessive. It isn't as if New Zealand doesn't have anti-piracy rules, and there shouldn't have been any problem in arresting and trialling him in either New Zealand or Germany.
Needless, regardless of any rants or whatever, everyone has to deal with the aftermath. It seems pretty likely that at some point in the future most cyberlockers will become unreliable (perhaps Mediafire/Rapidshare will stay above board, but the rest, I doubt it). Hence I'm looking to perhaps take RPGMaker Trans onto private hosting. The catch is that this costs money, and I'm pretty unwilling to actually spend money on distributing RPGMaker Trans. That said, private hosting would enable a few neat things to go ahead that up till now haven't been possible.
So I'm putting out a poll on if people would donate to the RPGMaker Trans project. If there's enough people backing me, I'll look to setting up a proper website for RPGMaker Trans and whatever other projects I make. I'm not looking for a huge amount of money - on low end VPS's the price would probably be about $50 a year to cover my costs. So basically, if I get say about 20-30 backers, there'll be a dedicated website. If not.... ah well. What could have been, I suppose.
I wouldn't abandon DDL sites so fast. Fileserve is already sharing again, and I doubt anyone will touch a site that legitimately honors copyright takedown notices. If you really need free hosting though, there is always bittorrent.
ReplyDeleteI really wish I had your confidence. All the lockers that I have up at the moment follow the same business model as Megaupload (i.e. that they are perceived to *reward* infringing activity), hence I suspect even if they do honor takedown notices there would still be a case against them.
ReplyDeleteAs to torrents: they aren't free if you want to make them available all the time. That would require me to have a computer on all the time seeding, and simply put the noise factor of this means I can't really do it. Also: some of the year I'll be in Uni halls, where bittorrent is impossible.
And besides, as I said, there's stuff I'd like to do which is impossible with current service. If I could, I'd like to do that. For example, hosting translation projects.