Just when you thought watching folks pay scammers for free p2p apps online was the lowest form of business model...
http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-739.htmlFile sharing has unfortunately attracted all kinds of scams over the years. One common way to get money from unsuspecting users is to set up bogus websites for P2P services that charge good money for membership plans and then offer little more than access to freely available applications.
A company targeting the German market is now trying to pull of a twist in this old scam that tops everything we've seen before. Fastload.tv charges its customers more than 80 Euros (almost 130 USD) to access their file swapping service for a year - and then sends them letters threatening to send their name to German prosecutors. That is unless they pay the company another 340 Euro (about 540 USD), according to a report of the German online magazine netzwelt.de.
Fastload anonymizes all IP addresses, which means the prosecutor won't be able to get your data without our help. (...) We won't transmit the data as long as the damages are paid for and we receive a signed note from you to cease and desist."
This really is a new low folks, not only have they scammed the folks with claims of "legal p2p" for a non monitored or filtered p2p app, they now want to enrich themselves even further by offering to destroy evidence (if any exists) of infringing activity, this company qualifies completely for the title "p2p scum".
This has of course forced bayTSP into second place