It seems this is the month of shutting down file sharing sites. Microsoft and Adobe have filed to take down ex.ua, a file sharing service in the Ukraine. The site has been shut down after a six month investigation into claims of piracy .
Ex.ua is a very popular site in the Ukraine and even accounted for as much as 25% of Internet traffic in the country. Companies take piracy very seriously as they rely greatly off of software sales. Even though the concept of file sharing isn’t illegal, companies manage to find a way around it due to copyright infringement.
If thousands and thousands of people download say a $300 piece of software, well, it adds up in the long run. With the file sharing service being shut down, there’s a lot of data at stake too.
“Ukranian news site Watcher reports that the Ministry of Internal Affiars states “the police closed ex.ua under criminal investigation under part 2 of article 176 of the criminal proceedings”. The article in question covers violation of copyright and related rights.”
“In all it’s being reported that 200 servers were confiscated, carrying among them 6,000 terabytes of data. At present, 16 people are facing charges in the investigation, which could lead to a maximum prison sentence of 5 years.”
To give you an idea of how much data that is, 1 terabyte is 1000 gigabytes. The average computer has 250 gigabytes of hard drive space so you do the math. Either way, it’s not good for the Ukranian file sharing service. With piracy and copyright infringement lawsuits heating up, these takedowns aren’t going to end anytime soon.
Do you believe Microsoft and Adobe had the right to get the service shut down?
