If You Post Custom Content Via A File Sharing Site, Back It Up NOW – Just In Case!
Very good post indeed from Richdre over at Richdre’s Little Planet that’s perhaps a touch more relevent right here and now to Simmers that the SOPA business.
The US and New Zealand government – in a remarkably uncharacteristic display of lateral thinking, instead of chasing a million households across the planet for downloading CDs, DVDs, etc from the net for free, finally realised that if they took out the rogue host providers in question and charged them for failure to keep their house in order, in this case Megaupload (or Megapiracy as they’re nicknamed by some) the rest of them would start taking things as seriously as the likes of Rapidshare of Cuckooclockland do regarding complaints of copyright breeches.
More to the point, it would stop a lot of the piracy they’ve always claimed they’ve wanted to stamp out at source, and with Filesonic and Fileserve also looking set to go under having also been taking the rip for far too long, the tears of rage from Fatbeard and his buddies that their ‘entitlement’ to free everything has been taken away from them has warmed the cockles of our cold black hearts.
There is however the inevitable downside that the innocent are being punished with the guilty. Those that had been using these providers to upload their Sims 3 custom content for fellow fans to download may find themselves unable to access their own files, let alone anyone elses, and if the only copies they had of their own work were stored online, that could mean a lot of work lost.
The most popular one of course amongst most Simmers is Mediafire, and as it’s chief executive officer Derek Labian has already pointed out, the chances of them being next to suffer a shakedown are unlikely as Mediafire makes its money on adverts and subscriptions, and regularly closes down users that have uploaded pirated CDs, DVDs and movies. Rapidshare makes its money mainly on subscriptions and is ultra-strict because they come under the European Union’s copyright laws. Megaupload and their ilk by contrast worked by capping what you could download from them unless you subscribed, with the uploaders getting a cut – hence it’s popularity with pirates, and hence their heel dragging at taking down pirated content.
Of course, the chances are some file sharing service will spring up in Meerkovia or whatever who couldn’t give a flying duck about international copyright laws (unless it’s their crap getting pirated, that is) run by the Meerkat mafia, but until then it’ll slow the bar stewards down.
That doesn’t mean to say that Mediafire and Rapidshare are out of the woods yet (especially considering the US government’s track record for heavy handedness towards anything based in Switzerland, must be all that ‘neutrality’ is some sort of red rag to them!), so play it safe kiddies and make sure you’ve got back ups of your favourite Sims 3 files – just to be on the safe side.
We are living in ‘interesting times’, just be sure they don’t become too interesting for yourselves!
