[X] RS in legal troubles

German Music Industry To Shut Down RapidShare? (http://www.noobsters.com/forum/redirector.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmashable.com%2F200 8%2F01%2F29%2Fgerman-music-industry-to-shut-down-rapidshare%2F)



http://mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/rapidshare.png
Following a recent court loss, hugely popular file storage service Rapidshare (http://www.noobsters.com/forum/redirector.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Frapidshare.com%2F) might soon be faced (http://www.noobsters.com/forum/redirector.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftorrentfreak.com%2 Frapidshare-to-be-forced-to-shut-down-following-court-defeat-080129%2F) with a tough choice: stop users from uploading/downloading copyrighted music from its servers, or get shut down.

German’s equivalent of the RIAA, GEMA, has won a copyright infringement case against Rapidshare, as the judge ruled that Rapdishare can be held accountable for the actions of its users. It’s the story as old as the internet: if you’re merely providing a hosting service, should you also monitor every file hosted on your servers and prevent any copyrighted files to be uploaded/downloaded? Lately, the answer has been yes: at the very least, if the music/movie industry points to a file and ask you to remove it, you have to comply.

However, although GEMA was quick to declare victory on this one (http://www.noobsters.com/forum/redirector.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gema.de%2Fpres se%2Fpressemitteilungen%2Fpressemitteilung%2F%3Ftx _ttnews%255Btt_news%255D%3D688%26tx_ttnews%255Bbac kPid%255D%3D73%26cHash%3D2c827de5c9) (press release in German), claiming that RapidShare now must take preventive action and check all the files on its servers for copyright infringement, it’s not quite clear what the court has decided yet. We’ve seen pressure to put similar requirements on ISPs, and the general consensus among experts is that this would be either impossible or highly impractical; RapidShare, with the huge amount of material it hosts (they claim 4.5 petabytes of storage), would be no different.

The folks at TorrentFreak spoke to Christian Solmecke (http://www.noobsters.com/forum/redirector.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftorrentfreak.com%2 Frapidshare-to-be-forced-to-shut-down-following-court-defeat-080129%2F), a lawyer at the Cologne Chambers of Lawyers Wilde & Beuger, who thinks that RapidShare’s demise is far from inevitable. “RapidShare will appeal against the decision of the Landgericht (District Court) of Düsseldorf. If they do so, we will have to wait and see what the Oberlandesgericht (Higher District Court) of Düsseldorf (as the Court of Appeal) says,” he says.

RapidShare is fully operational at the time of this writing.

They sure are fully operational right now. (hello, "sweeny todd" part 4!)
But yeah, I think they can argue on the "completely impossible to enforce" front. If all else fails, they should move their servers to some island.

so say we all frakin bastages

I hope they stay online at least 'til my subscription runs out in April!!! :cs:

^ amen to that....gotta look into my subscription end date

I was planning on getting a year subscription, too. Damn. Think I may just go a month at a time for now.

Just think that if they succeed in closing RS.....fookers will do the same with all the others sharing services
& then....bye bye !!:2up:

The new DMCA's law in Swizterland could certainly help to close RS and the other :-(

What a sad world...