Hongfire.com removes Filesharing section.

Important announcement

How will this affect the fakku forums?

Meh, people will need to find a new filehost and a lot of older things may need to be reuploaded. Time and effort, but nothing that cant be replaced was lost.

Whether or not this has any affect on Fakku depends on too many variables for anyone to really accurately say Yes or No.

For one, HongFire is refusing to give all of the details regarding the DMCA files, aside form the fact that they came from Adult Sorce Media and HentaiKey. That said, that would imply almost exclusively to their huge collection of hentai visual novels and games.

Fakku does have a small selection of flash games and visual novels, so is it possible this could happen to Fakku? Well, yeah, it is certainly possible. Likely? No, not really. For one, Fakku isn't nearly as popular and well known as HongFire. Two, HongFire has never been very compliant when it comes to to C&Ds and other such threats. Sites don't take kindly to you ignoring their warnings.

I think the real question everyone has is what does this mean to me? Could I be in trouble? Then the answer is almost a definitive no. When a copyright holder files a DMCA takedown notice a site the only thing that means is that the holder has the legal authority to force said site to remove any and all infringed material, and if the site refuses they are allowed to pursue it with legal justification. That gives them NO right to file individual lawsuits against those who have used the site for downloading such material.

So at worst, yeah, Fakku could be sent a C&D, or worse a flat out DMCA takedown notice. However, chances are that would only ever apply to the Visual Novels section of the site because there are several in that section that are licensed in the United States and other countries. Fakku could run much the same as it is without the presence of downloadable VNs.

We can be sent C&D's for our forum(user uploads) as well.

That's what I was implying, the visual novel uploads, and possibly flash games. Soundtracks I suppose technically could too, but most of those are anime OST's and aren't licensed in the United States, and even those that are are rarely enforced copyrights.

Most of the h-mangas aren't licensed in the United States, and Japan just doesn't have the willpower to pursue legal action outside of their own boundaries, so there is very little to worry about there.

It's true, our two biggest issues are the videos and games(which are occasionally licensed). I still don't think this will lead to anything for Fakku, and while I do see some dangers for our American users out there it's pretty much just as dangerous to torrent music or movies and how often are people arrested for that now?

Well like I said at worst, Jacob could be sent a DMCA takedown notice. As long as Jacob complies within the set time period given in the notice, then Fakku.net is absolved of all liability.

That in itself makes a DMCA takedown notice scary. There have been incidents in the United States when companies have filed a takedown notice in regards to questionable ownership of copyrighted material. However, it is in a site's best interest to comply because then they are no longer liable, even if the takedown notice may not have been legal in of itself.

Back when I used to maintain an anime site, we got stuff like this nearly all the time, but we used 3rd party download sites, so they kept sending them all the legal crap. Once they figured out that it was us doing it, they sent snail mail to our host and took us down. Usually your host warns you and then they tell to A. Quit it or B. Shut you down ASAP. Of course, you can always go to a new host, but it's really a neverending loop of legal notices.

I'm not sure if all the H mangas in here have some sort of copyright, but if they do, I'm sure Fakku could just suddenly disappear one day. But it's been around for years... so hopefully that will never happen.

Overall, the best advice I can tell you all is if you know it's copyrighted, then never use your own server to host these files. Of course if you do, keep the files on a spare hard drive or a few DVDs with backups.

Obviously, any links to shit on Hongfire.com won't be accessible.

Fuck hongfire, there are plenty of filesharing sites..

I hope you realize that the biggest draw of Hongfire was that it was the one place where you could actually find *working* links to anything anime, manga, visual novel and eroge related. The content itself is typically hosted elsewhere.

I.e. the take down of Hongfire's filehosting section won't hurt so much because they're gone as a host, but because they'll no longer act as an aggregator to your searches.

I hope you'll realize, I'm drunk most of the time that I'm on this site. So, hoping that I'll realize anything from what you say is a fucking longshot. I've never given half a shit about hongfire, because I never found it useful. Even when I got shit from it, I've found that I could get the same exact shit just as easily, or easier, from other places.

[quote}I.e. the take down of Hongfire's filehosting section won't hurt so much because they're gone as a host, but because they'll no longer act as an aggregator to your searches.[/quote]

In a sense, that may be true, but if you know what you're looking for, you can just go to the actual source. Even if you can't you gotta look for a while and make sure the file you're dling is the best you can get. I don't know about anyone else, but I've always seen files on Hongfire, and similar sites, as animals in a zoo. If you're looking to hunt a tiger, go out into the wild and find a real fucking tiger.