MPAA sues Hotfile, battle for cloud begins

For the first time, a group of Hollywood film studios has filed a copyright lawsuit against a cyberlocker.

File-hosting service Hotfile has made a business out of offering a stash box for people to store their pirated movies, the Motion Picture Association of America claims in its suit against Hotfile.

"In less than two years, Hotfile has become one of the 100 most trafficked sites in the world," the MPAA said in a press release issued today. "That is a direct result of the massive digital theft that Hotfile promotes."

According to the MPAA, Hotfile is operated by Florida resident Anton Titov, who was not immediately available for comment.

A growing number of digital-locker services have come under fire lately by copyright owners. Liberty Media Holdings, an adult-film studio, last month also filed a copyright suit against Hotfile. On the music side, EMI, the smallest of the four record labels, is suing MP3tunes.com, a digital locker specializing in the storage of songs.

The cyberlockers are an alternative to BitTorrent file-sharing services and are growing in popularity. With these services, there's no need to download any software. A user logs on to a locker service and watches whatever films or TV shows are stored there.

:story: Full story: c|net