File sharing in the post "Megaupload" era

ByKim Scarborough

Online storage service (file sharing site) in late January"Megaupload" closedDid. Closure of a huge site that occupied 30 to 40% of the share of the same lineage service has a big influence on the Internet and FBI gives "a big blow to the act of stealing intellectual property"Advance notice in releaseThere were also things I did, there were other sites to close down and turn off the file sharing feature. About this "post Megaupload era" that the communication volume of the net has decreased by 2 to 3% per hour,DeepField NetworksAnnounced the analysis that we have been looking over over the three months since the end of 2011.

File Sharing in the Post MegaUpload Era | DeepField Networks

If you really want to download something, just spare some time searching, you can even find a movie just released or even a movie before it's released. For example, in FileTubes, RapidManiac, Filesbay you can find many links to these files. But generally I can not find it in DropBox or Box.net.

This is just an example, a movie just released nationwide on January 27, 2012Man on a LedgeSearch results for. Although genuine fake is unknown, the full story is already downloadable.


It seems very difficult to separate file sharing sites that distribute copyright infringing content from legitimate websites that companies use to share internal documents and materials. Sites that are protected by copyright and are used for sharing legal files and illegal file sharing sites have similar designs, similar propaganda clauses, and (from the site with illegal files, it is ironic SpecificallyDMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)Everything looks exactly the same as displaying policies and warning about illegal file sharing. Although Megaupload was closed and the founders were arrested, it is pointed out that efforts to disguise the "real business" part was not enough.

In DeepField Networks infrastructure supporting file sharing site, for exampleHosting serviceYaColocation service, We are paying attention to partners for payment of incentives.

In general public, file sharing service is thought that files are distributed anywhere if there is a net, but in fact it is different. There are a lot of file sharing sites, but very few providers offering co-location services, only 6 companies support 80% of file sharing-related traffic.

This is an example of North America, showing data on January 18, 2012 just before Megaupload is closed. The thickness of the line directly represents the amount of traffic, green is traffic to the file sharing site, red is traffic to hosting and collocation.


Looking at this, you can see that different file sharing sites are connected to the same provider (LeaseWeb, NForce, Carpathia, Choopa, Softlayer). As of January 18, I can see that the Megaupload type "MegaVideo" was the largest site occupying 34% of traffic related to file sharing. And most of the servers are AmericanCarpathia HostingIt is located in the NetherlandsLeasewebAnd it was in other European companies. According to the investigation authorities, Carpathia has 1000 servers, a total of 25 petabytes of servers, and Leaseweb also knows that there were 700 servers.

As of January 19th, 2012, the data will look like this. "Mega Empire" collapsed and MegaVideo disappeared, and Putlocker gathered traffic instead.


What is the biggest impact of the closure of Megaupload, is not "the end of file sharing era" ... .... File sharing has not decreased, even in North America alone, mainly because it is not efficient. Rather, most of the terabyte-class traffic that had been heading to servers in the United States has come to pass through the expensive Atlantic transit cable from Europe.

By the way, in 2009The traffic of the whole net is decreasing as the proportion of file sharing and porn decreases and the game and flash are increasingAlthough there was a story saying that, as YouTube became capable of uploading even large files with a higher image quality than at that time, is not it that the proportion of Flash (streaming) is increasing now?