Measurement and understanding of cyberlocker URL-sharing sites

Abstract

Recently, Cyberlocker services have gained great popularity in the file-sharing market. Driven by tremendous benefits a large number of files such as popular movies are uploaded to Cyberlockers. We explore the profit chain of filesharing networks based on Cyberlockers and find that an important issue is how to collect the download URLs of popular files stored at different Cyberlockers and share them with public users. In this paper, we focus on these sites collecting and sharing the Cyberlocker URLs of movies, called Cyberlocker URL-sharing sites. First, we extract 1,587 URL-sharing sites based on 31,525 valid pages returned by Google search and demonstrate that the quality distribution of these sites follows a power-law. Second, we analyze the link citations among URLsharing sites and build the directed link citation graph. By characterizing basic metrics of the graph, such as cited strength and in/out-degree, we understand the structure of URL-sharing sites in depth. Furthermore, we discover that Cyberlocker URLs can be disseminated dynamically through crawler mechanisms among different sites, and highlight the implications of such metrics in this context. Additionally, we study the security risks of 1,587 URL-sharing sites. The results show that security risks do exist when surfing 155 suspicious URL-sharing sites such as myrls.me and rapid4me.com although the majority sites (90.23%) are safe. Finally, some preliminary suggestions are discussed from the industry point of view for how to improve the effectiveness of searching, collecting and disseminating Cyberlocker URLs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work on the measurement and understanding of Cyberlocker URL-sharing sites.

Online Copyright Enforcement, Consumer Behavior, and Market Structure

“…In their simplest form, cyberlockers are online services that allow Internet users to upload and store large files. While this type of service can be used to back up any type of personal data, it can also be used to share copyright protected files such as movies and episodes of TV series (Antoniades et al, 2009;Liu et al, 2013). A user (or uploader) willing to share a video would start by uploading it to the cyberlocker.…”

Catch Me If You Can: Effectiveness and Consequences of Online Copyright Enforcement

“…6 In their simplest form, cyberlockers are online services that allow Internet users to upload and store large files. While this type of service can be used to back up any type of personal data, it can also be used to share copyright protected files such as movies and episodes of TV series (Antoniades et al, 2009;Liu et al, 2013). Once a file is uploaded, the uploader receives a download URL, which can be shared with other individuals, e.g.…”

Profiling and Tracking a Cyberlocker Link Sharer in a Public Web Forum

“…After a file has been uploaded successfully, the cyberlocker generates a unique download URL (cyberlocker link) for the uploader to copy and share with other users. The cyberlocker link can be posted and distributed via third-party sites such as web forums and blogs, enabling other users to easily download the file from the cyberlocker by clicking on the link [11].…”