It is no secret that the French file hosting platform Uptobox has been in the spotlight of rights holders for some time.
Founded in 2011, Uptobox gained popularity by making it easy for users to upload, store, and share files with others. In April 2023 alone, Uptobox received 34 million visits, about a third of those in France.
News that Uptobox domains had been blocked by French ISPs It emerged in May, but the service remained undisturbed. Instead of panicking, he offered unlocking tips.
Serious technical problems...
About three hours ago, the official Uptobox account in 'X' tweeted that the service was experiencing problems.
"It seems we have a technical problem, we are currently investigating, the network appears to be severely disrupted," the platform reported.
Reports from across Europe confirmed that Uptobox was down, accompanied by differences of opinion over the cause. Shortly after, the French media outlet l'Informรฉ broke the news that no service user wanted to hear.
Police raids on two data centers
According the informed According to sources, around 20 police officers (see update below) raided Scaleway and OpCore, two cloud service providers based in Vitry-sur-Seine, an area in the southeastern suburbs of Paris.
At the time of the report, police were still on the scene, allegedly carrying out a court-ordered โcounterfeit seizureโ operation targeting Uptobox, which presumably used servers at Scaleway and OpCore.
According to l'Informรฉ, the raids were carried out on behalf of the world's largest entertainment companies; Columbia, Paramount, StudioCanal, Warner Bros, Disney, Apple and Amazon. They are all members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the world's largest anti-piracy coalition.
(Update: ACE has just confirmed its participation in the operation. Statement below)
No Uptobox domains are functional at the time of writing this article.
One Image Reportedly Sealed Uptobox's Fate
One notable detail from l'Informรฉ's report suggests that an image posted on Twitter almost five years ago may have marked the beginning of the end for Uptobox. It was published in the @Starouille account just before Christmas 2018 by an individual believed to be the technical director of Uptobox.
'Online' is a reference to Online SAS, the cloud hosting company that was renamed Scaleway in 2015. DC2 is a reference to data center 2, a 4,500 mยฒ facility located in Vitry-sur-Seine, the same suburb attacked by police this morning. The images courtesy of Google exhaustively clarify any doubts that may remain about the location.
When contacted by l'Informรฉ for comment, representatives from the film industry, Scaleway and OpCore declined to answer questions.
Opinions of "experts" should be ignored
Some 'experts' who publish on social networks claim that the l'Informรฉ article is false. Unfortunately, they have to overcome two huge obstacles to remain credible.
The most important thing is that the news was given by journalist marc rees, so we can safely bet that the house is authentic. Secondly, the official Uptobox account on 'X' just provided important updates.
"After the incident, we lost access to the servers containing the user's files, it is no longer possible to access them, we have not yet received any documented confirmation of the seizure of our servers by anyone," he reported first tweet read.
"The database was not affected and, for security reasons, it was relocated off-web and the servers running the site were completely wiped."
Uptobox reports that no user data is currently lost and if it can regain access to its servers, files and user accounts may be reconnected.
โMeanwhile, your files remain anonymous on our servers and cannot be used. As for Premium subscriptions, they are frozen and will be restored and credited with compensation as soon as we regain access to the file servers. โWe are not going to give up, our team is working hard to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.โ
Update:
ACE informs us that this was not a police action, but rather a court-ordered civil action. Two police officers assisted in the operation, which was orchestrated by ACE. In addition, ACE took action in Dubai, where the main operators supposedly reside.
Additional statement from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment:
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the world's leading anti-piracy coalition, announced today that it has shut down Uptobox and Uptostream, two of the most notorious illegal video servers in the world of digital piracy.
The action, carried out in France and the United Arab Emirates, puts an end to a piracy operation that has been well known for a decade among distributors of infringing content. The illegal service had a massive audience, mainly from France, but also from Indonesia, India and Mexico, with 1.5 billion visits in the last three years. The services hosted a sizeable infringing library of film and television titles affecting all ACE members and many other rights holders, allowing users to stream and download copyrighted content free of charge or through a paid premium subscription.
The two French nationals who ran the illegal service are based in Dubai, where they racked up illegal profits by selling advertising and premium subscriptions.
"The action we announced today demonstrates that even the most sophisticated piracy operations are not above the law," said Jan van Voorn, executive vice president and head of global content protection at the Motion Picture Association and director of ACE. โThis case sends a strong message to criminal operators that their illegal actions will eventually end. They may think their operations are covert, but ACE has the network, resources and experience to identify and shut them down.โ
"Canal+ supports swift action when acts of piracy compromise intellectual property rights, which in turn has an impact on our business," said Cรฉline Boyer, Director of Content Protection at Canal+. "Our partnership with ACE is essential to ensuring the creative market continues to thrive by tackling content piracy at its source."
โFrance Televisions has zero tolerance for piracy and illegal distribution of content and channels,โ said Nathalie Bobineau, Senior Vice President of International Development at French public broadcaster France Televisions. "By collaborating with ACE, we reinforce our commitment to upholding the principles of copyright protection and preserving the value of original content."
