Rapidshare loses court battle against German booksellers

[Alexander Turcic]

The time for Rapidshare to rule the world of one-click file hosters is long gone, which doesn't mean that the Swiss-based company is having it any easier staying out of trouble. In fact this week, the German Federal Court of Justice affirmed an earlier court decision (German) that Rapidshare had to proactively filter the files uploaded by its users and take effective measures against the use of illegal content on its service. The case was brought by a group of German booksellers, book publishers and Germany's music rights authority GEMA.

As expected, Alexander Skipis, CEO of the German Booksellers Association, is in a celebrating mood.

"The decision of the Federal Court of Justice to affirm the judgement is a crucial step forward. Cyberlockers like Rapidshare bear responsibility for content on their servers, and they can no longer hide behind making vague excuses. The days are gone when one could profit from copyright infringing uploads."

No comment from Rapidshare on this yet.

[via Golem.de]

[medard]

What I don't understand is: Does this apply to Rapidshare only, and why? There are several file hoster, did Rapishare something different on a technical level than the others do?

[HarryT]

Rapidshare are certainly the most notorious of the "File Locker" services in terms of making it easy for pirates. I'm sure they must have legit users, but a Rapidshare link certainly always makes me wary.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by medard

What I don't understand is: Does this apply to Rapidshare only, and why? There are several file hoster, did Rapishare something different on a technical level than the others do?

I'm sure it applies to others as well. rapidshare and megauploads etc. have been used a lot for filesharing, legal or not.

I can't think of any reason that any filehosting service, even cloud services meant for personal data storage only can not be used to some extent for illegal file sharing. Prosecute one and you should prosecute them all whether they be Microsoft or Google or HP etc. Making a profit from this whether intentional or not should be a separate issue, kind of like living of the avails of, or not paying taxes on illicit income. Perhaps this is the case, but I doubt it. I can't see merely making it possible for people to share files can be considered a crime when there are so many ways to do it.

Helen

[medard]

So this means that Facebook, Google and others have to "proactively filter the files" that users are uploading to their cloud storage and which they can share with others? I don't think that this is going to happen.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by medard

So this means that Facebook, Google and others have to "proactively filter the files" that users are uploading to their cloud storage and which they can share with others? I don't think that this is going to happen.

Me either. And it doesn't actually mean that, just that maybe it should be the same rules for all and we are pretty sure that that is not the case.

Helen

PS: Well I'm pretty sure anyway

[Purple Lady]

I remember seeing something a while back about dropbox giving users a problem if they had opds catalogs in a shared folder. I don't remember where I saw it though.

[corroonb]

What exactly is the point of the safe harbour provisions of the DMCA? No website is responsible for the actions of their users. They are required to remove infringing content when requested which Rapidshare do.

Also when will we start to see content owners prosecuted for perjury when they submitted frivolous DMCA takedowns? Never because the law and the legal system is systemically corrupt.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by corroonb

What exactly is the point of the safe harbour provisions of the DMCA?

This was a German ruling based on European law. DMCA is American.

Also when will we start to see content owners prosecuted for perjury when they submitted frivolous DMCA takedowns? Never because the law and the legal system is systemically corrupt.

Here is a description of those frivolous requests:

http://torrentfreak.com/google-start...quests-121213/

It sound to me like the requests are mistakes, not deliberate. Given the enormous volume of takedown requests, some of it must be automated, and so could be the result of a software bug.

By contrast, I think the people who are illegally uploading and downloading copyrighted materials are more likely to be doing so deliberately. So why not prosecute them first?

Do I mean that seriously? No. But just like I don't want to ruin the lives of college student downloaders, I don't want to ruin the lives of people working at Warner Brothers or Penguin Random House. This should be a civil matter.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

This was a German ruling based on European law. DMCA is American.



Here is a description of those frivolous requests:

http://torrentfreak.com/google-start...quests-121213/

It sound to me like the requests are mistakes, not deliberate. Given the enormous volume of takedown requests, some of it must be automated, and so could be the result of a software bug.

By contrast, I think the people who are illegally uploading and downloading copyrighted materials are more likely to be doing so deliberately. So why not prosecute them first?

Do I mean that seriously? No. But just like I don't want to ruin the lives of college student downloaders, I don't want to ruin the lives of people working at Warner Brothers or Penguin Random House. This should be a civil matter.

Not only civil, but more cut and dried.

Does anyone really know how easy or difficult it is to police a large online storage website. Are their studies done?

Perhaps a website should be set up or better yet, a consortium of the companies involved should take over policing rapidshare. See how well they do at the policing end. For all I know it may be easy, but I doubt the fine line between keeping your customers and satisfying the demands being made would even be possible without spending more than you make.

As one example if a site is hosted in a country where file sharing is not illegal and the file sharer are using a connection in a country that is not illegal, how can you really tell. Lots of ways to hide your IP.

Not saying people should fileshare illegally, just that the current ways of dealing with it seem to be bullying and saying my lawyers are better than yours and I can afford a hell of a lot more of them.

Let the rights holders put their money where their mouth is and come up with a foolproof and inexpensive way of policing online content or do the actual policing themselves and be prepared to pay damages if they do it incorrectly.

Helen

[Alexander Turcic]

Unless memory serves me wrong, one aspect in this case that spelled doom for Rapidshare (and many of its clones) was the fact that they used to pay loyalty credits to those who shared their Rapidshare links. In other words, they inspired their membersfinancially to share as much as possible.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Unless memory serves me wrong, one aspect in this case that spelled doom for Rapidshare (and many of its clones) was the fact that they used to pay loyalty credits to those who shared their Rapidshare links. In other words, they inspired their membersfinancially to share as much as possible.

Ah, they "franchised!"

In the immortal words of Steve Martin in The Jerk:

Navin R. Johnson: "Ah... It's a profit deal."

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Unless memory serves me wrong, one aspect in this case that spelled doom for Rapidshare (and many of its clones) was the fact that they used to pay loyalty credits to those who shared their Rapidshare links. In other words, they inspired their membersfinancially to share as much as possible.

Years ago I had a rapidshare account and I don't remember that. Maybe after my time. My usage was pretty low, just the odd email attachment that was too large so maybe I didn't qualify.

Helen

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by medard

What I don't understand is: Does this apply to Rapidshare only, and why? There are several file hoster, did Rapishare something different on a technical level than the others do?

I suppose that the main reason is that Rapidshare is a real company and located in a jurisdiction (Switzerland) that doesn't make obtaining a decision in a German court obviously pointless. These hosters tend to be supposedly run by (sham) companies in Russia or places like Panama, Belize, Tonga etc.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Years ago I had a rapidshare account and I don't remember that. Maybe after my time. My usage was pretty low, just the odd email attachment that was too large so maybe I didn't qualify.

Helen

TorrentFreak has a story about it when it was closed:

http://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-k...ncerns-100620/