Hollywood is urging the US courts to force the file-sharing site Hotfile offline and wants it to undergo the same fate as Megaupload.
The Hollywood studios of Disney, 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros allege that more than 90% of the files downloaded from Hotfile infringe on copyrights.
The studios claimed every Hotfile user is engaged in copyright infringement and contended that nearly all of Hotfile’s top affiliates who had received payments "were egregious repeat offenders", according to the BBC.
They drew attention to Hotfile’s affiliate system business model, where users are paid based on how many times their files have been downloaded including other factors such as location and file size.
But Hotfile is claiming safe harbour protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which offers immunity to service providers if they remove copyright infringing material on request.
