Is Rapidshare a promoter of e-book piracy?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

Neat assertion. Do back it up fully

Sony vs Universal Studios. It's a Supreme Court case that basically defined the standards for contributory copyright infringement. The court's opinion outlines "capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses" as the main test.

If you know of anywhere in US copyright law that states an absolute number which would make a tool illegal, please post it.

In other words[B], why do you assume statistics are unbiased and unbiasable?

Why do you assume I ever said that?

But by all means, defend the position that RS doesn't thrive on hosting illegally uploaded content.

Why should I defend a position that I never stated? The question had nothing to do with thriving on content. The statement I was responding to was that RS sold IP content.

If you really feel you gain something from trying to convince me of the fact that because I can't know the total number of files, I'm not allowed to say anything at all

I never said you weren't allowed to say anything (I see a pattern here).

The point is that without knowing the total number of files, you have no idea of the relative amount of infringing vs non-infringing material. The absolute number of infringing material is irrelevant. According to the Supreme Court (again, this is all based on US law, which doesn't really apply so it's kind of moot), it would depend on whether there was significant noninfringing uses. This is assuming you are trying to accuse them of contributory infringement.

According to the DMCA (again, same note about the jurisdiction), qualifying for safe harbor requires that the site not be aware of the legal status of the material. They are not required to know it, in fact, it's better for them if they don't. They are required to honor takedown requests, which they claim to. I don't know if they do or not, do you?

I have nothing against filesharing, but I do have something against RS.
...
Looking at intent, however, I can safely say I disapprove of their business practice even while I wholeheartedly support the right to distribute files between end users. And yes, I can happily say that without "knowing" the RS owners at all, without feeling the least presumptive.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're basically saying that you support hosting/distributing of files on behalf of end users, but you that you disapprove of RS because "you don't like them" and/or you assume you know what their "intent" is?

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're basically saying that you support hosting/distributing of files on behalf of end users, but you that you disapprove of RS because "you don't like them" and/or you assume you know what their "intent" is?

I will. As you so happily repeat over and over again, you seem to be misrepresenting my point of view. As stated before, and I thought fairly clearly, my issue with RS is that they're making money off the distribution of IP content that isn't theirs. And furthermore, that I am too obtuse to recognize the difference between "selling non-horribly-hamstrung access to files" and "selling files". For any file larger than the file limit (say, a DVD image split into 90MB parts) downloading it without first buying a subscription takes a non-trivial amount of time longer than downloading it through their free service. Sure, you can argue that you can download the file either way, so you're not forced to buy that subscription, and that this applies equally to IP and free content, but, as I said in a part of a post that you must have missed, making something available on a commercial scale and making a profit off that is not covered by "copyright infringement" laws, but by different ones, ones that carry criminal conviction possibilities. Sony vs. UStudios only applies to "home copying"; I doubt you could easily extrapolate that ruling to, to make an analogy with what RS does, making those home copies for private citizens. (The comparison is very awkward because the only analogy I can come up with is sending the original to a tape copying facility which does the copying for you, and then sends back copies to you at another location. I doubt that would be covered/allowed in the offline scenario, so I'm having some trouble convincing myself this ruling should really apply to the RS case.) [esp given "for example, in A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. 239 F.3d (9th Cir. 2001), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a fair use "space shifting" argument raised as an analogy to the time-shifting argument that prevailed in Sony.", which seems rather more relevant to the Rapidshare scenario.]

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Anybody with a clue will realize that they can't. Judges rarely have a clue about this sort of stuff.

Er?

They want a bunch of hashed added to Rapidshare's hash filter. It's silly, and won't prevent much at all, but it's perfectly possible.

The problem is it destroys their DMCA protection. Which, I believe, is the point.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Daithi

Go to Google and type in a book or other file you want followed by 'Rapidshare' and you will get tons of listings. There are also sites such as Rapidshare-search and RapidLibrary that obviously have spiders that have crawled Rapidshare's content (but I'm sure Rapidshare knows nothing about this <wink><wink>).

Actually, they're nearly all scams. Search for something legal, try and download it from one or more of those links and get back to me. Oh, and make very sure you update your browser and anti-virus program before you do.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by Daithi

The point I was making is that Rapidshare and illegal pawn shops are analagous in that they both knowingly sell stolen goods. The fact that one business can SEE the person who originally stole the goods does not in any way invalidate this analogy.

The Yellow Pages provide addresses, phone numbers, and Ads for legitimate businesses. They are nowhere close to being a business like Rapidshare.

You have no point here.

You failed both to show that rapidshare knows what content it's users put up at any time - whether legal or not.

The yellow pages indexes criminal enterprises too. a lot. unlicensed electricians, stores selling knock of fashions, etc. etc. as with torrents, this is a minority occurrence. unlike Rapidshare, the phone company wont pull the ad on a customer complaint.

You seem to have this goofy idea that rapidshare is used only, or at least mostly for pirated material. where is the proof of your allegation? Do you present any evidence of this at all? Not that I have seen.

Torrents are used by people I know for distributing large video files of thing like civil war re-enactments, and their graduation ceremony from 30 years ago.

You haven't shown at all that pirate content far exceeds their content. In fact, you seem to be claiming that these people either do not matter, or do not exist.

All on the basis of unsupported assertion.

[ahi]

I find it amusing that the cornerstone issue as to whether or not RS makes its stored files publicly available wholesale is being altogether ignored.

- Ahi

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

They can't police content if they want to qualify for safe harbor under the DMCA.

Do not attempt to confuse the issue with Earth Logic. We are discussing copyright infringement, a moral outrage that has cost more lives than the Civil War, 9/11, and the Iraq War combined.

Erm.

For some understandings of "cost more lives."
EVERY BOOK HAS A SOUL, AND UNAUTHORIZED COPIES ARE ZOMBIES.

Please stop ebook zombification. End all downloading!

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

As stated before, and I thought fairly clearly, my issue with RS is that they're making money off the distribution of IP content that isn't theirs. And furthermore, that I am too obtuse to recognize the difference between "selling non-horribly-hamstrung access to files" and "selling files".

Direct vs indirect financial benefit makes a big difference regarding the equivalent to safe harbor laws. That's why ISPs can sell connectivity and respond to takedown notices, but why Amazon would theoretically be liable to copyright infringement for selling pirated eBooks. RS does not charge directly for IP content. They charge for the connectivity and bandwidth. What gets downloaded/uploaded with that service is the user's responsibility.

It's a classic example of DMCA safe harbor. Yes, RS definitely has a bad reputation, and there probably is a lot of infringing material, but you can't decide they're guilty because you don't like them. As far as I can tell, everything they're doing would qualify for safe harbor in the US. In order to go after them, you'd probably have to use something like contributory infringement, and argue that there are no significant non-infringing uses, which means that the relative comparison of infringing/non-infringing is relevant. An absolute number of one or the other isn't meaningful.

What's the difference in the services they provide between RS and YouTube? Why should YouTube be legal but RS not?

making something available on a commercial scale and making a profit off that is not covered by "copyright infringement" laws, but by different ones, ones that carry criminal conviction possibilities.

What other laws are you talking about besides copyright? Yes, there is criminal vs civil copyright infringement, but it's still copyright law. Are there specific Swiss laws you're aware of that you're referring to? The only context I can speak from is comparing the situation to what would happen with a similar service in the US. Here, commercial profit off of unauthorized copyrighted material is definitely covered under copyright law.

The US DMCA safe harbor exceptions, which is basically what RS is relying on, specifically state direct financial benefit vs indirect.

The only other thing I can figure you're talking about is contributory infringement, which is where the "significant non-infringing use" comes into play.

Can you be more specific about what type of laws you believe they're violating?

Sony vs. UStudios only applies to "home copying"; I doubt you could easily extrapolate that ruling to, to make an analogy with what RS does

It's already being used as the basis for filesharing cases, as well as for much of what is written in the DMCA.

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a fair use "space shifting" argument raised as an analogy to the time-shifting argument that prevailed in Sony[/B].", which seems rather more relevant to the Rapidshare scenario.]

Fair use and space shifting are completely different from what RS does. They are claiming neither. From what I can tell, it looks to me like they are claiming the equivalent of safe harbor. I fail to see anything in your post that explains why they should not be able to, or even a clear definition of what laws you think they're violating. Something other than copyright, apparently?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

They want a bunch of hashed added to Rapidshare's hash filter. It's silly, and won't prevent much at all, but it's perfectly possible.

Yes, my point was that adding hashes is silly and won't really do anything.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

Well, ebookshare has been up for years- guess if you only LINK to sites or torrents it is okay.

IMHO, the publishers STILL do not understand pricing of e-books. Look at the ridiculaous prices charged for tech e-books, esp. computer related. APress is an example- they want over $40 for a protected pdf e-book. I would NEVER pay thaat price, nor would most people. But, I have bought several Apress pdf's for the "special" price of $10.......

For technical books, that pricing may not be ridiculous.

First, all books have costs that they incur regardless of whether they ever see print. There will be an advance paid to the author for rights to publish the book. There will be the time spent on the book by the editor, copy editor, proofreader, and art director, with some other folks like illustrators and contract lawyers also involved. And there will be an allocated share of general corporate overhead. All of these costs occur before the book is turned into a PDF file that can be sent to a printer as input to the imagesetter that will generated the plates the book is printed from. How much the book is priced at will be determined by what it costs to produce, and how many copies the publisher expects to sell.

Technical books are by nature expensive. They are costly to produce, go out of date quickly, and appeal to a relatively limited market.

Amazon can price the latest Dan Brown novel that will sell millions at $9.95 and do nicely, thank you. If O'Reilly and Associates tried to do that with their computer manuals, they'd be belly up and out of business in a heartbeat.
______
Dennis

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Daithi

The point I was making is that Rapidshare and illegal pawn shops are analagous in that they both knowingly sell stolen goods.

Originally Posted by Phogg

You have no point here.

You failed both to show that rapidshare knows what content it's users put up at any time - whether legal or not.

Not to mention that they failed to know the difference between selling stolen goods and copyright infringement, which fall under completely different laws. So trying to draw a comparison between them is nonsense.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Daithi

I know how their system works because I've used their free service before. I was stealing. I guess I'm just one of those weird people who is dishonest enough to steal, but honest enough to admit it.

I'm not going to lie to others, or to myself, and try to justify stealing based on some convoluted logic about an illegitimate business occasionally getting listed in the yellow pages, or a legitimate file occasionally getting listed on Rapidshare.

I appreciate your attempt at honesty, but I think you're still making a fundamental error. Mind you, it's one just about everyone makes at one time or another.

Because you have used RapidShare to share files illegally, you assume everyone else is, too. You are saying "Every other user of RapidShare is a crook, just like me!"

Er, no. They aren't. I've no doubt some are, but you can't meaningfully tar everyone with the same brush. You can speak for yourself in this. You cannot speak for others.

I do not assume I'm representative, and that everyone else shares my viewpoints, motivations, and behavior patterns. Indeed, I assume I'm a minority on most things, with the exception of male, human, and alive.
______
Dennis

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Because you have used RapidShare to share files illegally, you assume everyone else is, too. You are saying "Every other user of RapidShare is a crook, just like me!"

Some people feel better about their own poor choices if they can convince themselves that everyone else was making the same mistakes.

With that said, I have no idea if the majority of RapidShare files are infringing or not. But I doubt anyone else on here really knows either.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Some people feel better about their own poor choices if they can convince themselves that everyone else was making the same mistakes.

With that said, I have no idea if the majority of RapidShare files are infringing or not. But I doubt anyone else on here really knows either.

It's broader than that. We all tend to assume that others feel, think, and act like we do, and that we're representative, regardless of the circumstances and choices. That's almost never true, and the consequences of doing so can be tragic when it gets to areas like international relations.

But quite so: we don't know if the majority of files on RapidShare are illegal, and we can't know. Claims otherwise are unsubstantiated and anecdotal, and not meaningful evidence one way or the other.
______
Dennis

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

For technical books, that pricing may not be ridiculous.

First, all books have costs that they incur regardless of whether they ever see print. There will be an advance paid to the author for rights to publish the book. There will be the time spent on the book by the editor, copy editor, proofreader, and art director, with some other folks like illustrators and contract lawyers also involved. And there will be an allocated share of general corporate overhead. All of these costs occur before the book is turned into a PDF file that can be sent to a printer as input to the imagesetter that will generated the plates the book is printed from. How much the book is priced at will be determined by what it costs to produce, and how many copies the publisher expects to sell.

Technical books are by nature expensive. They are costly to produce, go out of date quickly, and appeal to a relatively limited market.

Amazon can price the latest Dan Brown novel that will sell millions at $9.95 and do nicely, thank you. If O'Reilly and Associates tried to do that with their computer manuals, they'd be belly up and out of business in a heartbeat.

No one is asking that all books be $10 or less, just that as a whole books come down in price. Seems silly when some places want $27 for the ebook, when I can buy the paperbook from any store for $20 less.