January 28, 2008 at 15:01Rapidshare sues all pirates
One of the most popular (if not the most popular) file sharing services in the world, Rapidshare has become a defendant in a German copyright infringement court. Rapidshare service provides its customers with free and paid services for the placement and exchange of files. Users can go to the page of the hosting service to download any file and get a link to it. The link is distributed to colleagues and friends, laid out on sites, blogs and forums. After going through it, everyone can download this file to their computer.
There are a lot of such services in the world and in Russia, and most of them, in order to avoid problems with the law, prefer to position themselves as assistants for office workers - something like “is the presentation too large to be attached to an email? Take advantage of our service! ” But it’s not a secret to anyone that in fact all of them are in the vast majority of cases used for the exchange of music, video and pornography. For those who are too lazy to understand the intricacies of setting up p2p clients, this is an excellent choice - each such service has a limit on the maximum amount of uploaded files, which usually allows you to exchange, for example, full music albums, rather than individual tracks, or movies of various contents without dividing them into many small pieces.
So, when a wave of "copyright" struggle overtook Germany last year, and in the country, under the pressure of representatives of the film and recording industries, a law was passed that provides for imprisonment from January 1, 2007 for downloading music and films from the Web (2 years and 5 years) - for downloading for commercial purposes), Rapidshare, sensing something was amiss, took action. To help (and replace) Rapidshare.de, located in Germany, Rapidshare.com was opened in Switzerland, which most users gradually switched to. But the German RIAA - GEMA - was not at all embarrassed, and already at the end of last year she began to pursue both Rapidshare missions, counting on the help and understanding from the Swiss police.
The essence of the accusations is simple and familiar from numerous lawsuits against Napster - they say, Rapidshare, by providing its file hosting services, contributes to the growth of piracy. Thus, the departure to the COM zone and to Switzerland did not save the famous file-collector, who is now in Germany literally in disgrace, from the court. GEMA, which manages the copyrights of 60,000 of its members, is serious. At the end of March, the court ruled that the hoster could be held responsible for copyright infringement by its users, and ordered Rapidshare to improve the filters to avoid further copyright infringement.
The CEO of GEMA commented on the court’s decision: “It confirms that it is not the task of copyright holders to monitor transactions on file-sharing services that profit from copyright infringements by their own money. This decision will serve as a good signal for other file hosting services that help individual users to create a huge system for the exchange of illegal products. "
However, on the same day, Rapidshare, taking a straightforward heroic stance, officially announced that it would appeal, as this court decision could inflict an irreparable blow on other companies involved in providing free disk space for their customers. Rapidshare is going to emphasize the fact that today it is not possible to technically check every file uploaded by thousands of users for any “forbidden” materials in it. In the end, the German service recalls, there is nothing illegal in sharing a copy of an honestly purchased music album with your file sharing service - and how to distinguish such a download from a truly “pirated” one?
There are a lot of such services in the world and in Russia, and most of them, in order to avoid problems with the law, prefer to position themselves as assistants for office workers - something like “is the presentation too large to be attached to an email? Take advantage of our service! ” But it’s not a secret to anyone that in fact all of them are in the vast majority of cases used for the exchange of music, video and pornography. For those who are too lazy to understand the intricacies of setting up p2p clients, this is an excellent choice - each such service has a limit on the maximum amount of uploaded files, which usually allows you to exchange, for example, full music albums, rather than individual tracks, or movies of various contents without dividing them into many small pieces.
So, when a wave of "copyright" struggle overtook Germany last year, and in the country, under the pressure of representatives of the film and recording industries, a law was passed that provides for imprisonment from January 1, 2007 for downloading music and films from the Web (2 years and 5 years) - for downloading for commercial purposes), Rapidshare, sensing something was amiss, took action. To help (and replace) Rapidshare.de, located in Germany, Rapidshare.com was opened in Switzerland, which most users gradually switched to. But the German RIAA - GEMA - was not at all embarrassed, and already at the end of last year she began to pursue both Rapidshare missions, counting on the help and understanding from the Swiss police.
The essence of the accusations is simple and familiar from numerous lawsuits against Napster - they say, Rapidshare, by providing its file hosting services, contributes to the growth of piracy. Thus, the departure to the COM zone and to Switzerland did not save the famous file-collector, who is now in Germany literally in disgrace, from the court. GEMA, which manages the copyrights of 60,000 of its members, is serious. At the end of March, the court ruled that the hoster could be held responsible for copyright infringement by its users, and ordered Rapidshare to improve the filters to avoid further copyright infringement.
The CEO of GEMA commented on the court’s decision: “It confirms that it is not the task of copyright holders to monitor transactions on file-sharing services that profit from copyright infringements by their own money. This decision will serve as a good signal for other file hosting services that help individual users to create a huge system for the exchange of illegal products. "
However, on the same day, Rapidshare, taking a straightforward heroic stance, officially announced that it would appeal, as this court decision could inflict an irreparable blow on other companies involved in providing free disk space for their customers. Rapidshare is going to emphasize the fact that today it is not possible to technically check every file uploaded by thousands of users for any “forbidden” materials in it. In the end, the German service recalls, there is nothing illegal in sharing a copy of an honestly purchased music album with your file sharing service - and how to distinguish such a download from a truly “pirated” one?