Rapidshare To Be Forced to Shut Down Following Court Defeat?
Written by enigmax on January 29, 2008The music industry in Germany has secured a legal victory over the hugely popular file-hosting service, Rapidshare. According to the rights holders, Rapidshare is going to have to stop its users from downloading infringing music tracks from its servers, or face the prospect of being shut down.
Last week we reported on rumors that Rapidshare had, or was about to be, shut down, rumors that now look likely to resurface. The company, one of the world’s largest ‘one-click’ file hosting services, has lost a copyright infringement case against German performing rights outfit, GEMA. Representing a claimed 60,000 members and more than 1 million rights owners worldwide, GEMA has taken an aggressive stance in pursuing legal action against Rapidshare, trying to force it to be accountable for the infringing actions of its users.
For its part, Rapidshare has always insisted that it cannot be held responsible for these actions, such as when users upload copyright works (in this case, music) to their servers for subsequent downloading by others.
On 23 January 2008, the district court in Düsseldorf (Landgericht) disagreed with this assertion after GEMA succeeded in convincing the court that Rapidshare should take responsibility for infringements carried out within its service.
GEMA are trying to imply that as a result of the decision, Rapidshare will be forced to take preventative action to stop GEMA works from even getting onto their servers, rather than a DMCA-style after-the-fact removal. GEMA says that if Rapidshare are forced to filter they will likely end up with a service that’s not worth operating, so they may decide to shut it down completely.
The GEMA press release has been published before the complete court decision, so it should be digested with at least a degree of scepticism, considering the huge amounts of spin employed by anti-piracy agencies and the music industries alike.
In a statement, Dr. Harald Heker, Chairman of the board at GEMA said: “This decision is a milestone in the fight against the illegal use of our repertoire”, which was almost a carbon-copy of a statement he made about the decision from a previous court case against Rapidshare. He went on to explain that measures have to be put in place for the protection of rights holders and claiming that file-hosts are not responsible for what their users do, is no longer an option. “With this decision of general principle,” he said, “the course of future action against comparable services has been smoothed.”
In their press release, GEMA speaks about the decision of the District Court of Düsseldorf but also mentions a decision from the District Court of Cologne.
TorrentFreak spoke to Christian Solmecke a lawyer at the Cologne Chambers of Lawyers Wilde & Beuger, to see what is likely to have happened in these cases.
He told us: “The normal way is as follows: GEMA files a lawsuit against Rapidshare because of alleged copyright infringement on three or four songs. If GEMA wins, Rapidshare is then obliged not to host these particular songs.”
Lots of anti-piracy and industry bodies state that it’s possible for file-hosting services and even ISPs to monitor, police and filter copyright works from their servers and networks. This case is no different, except this time it’s the court that has demanded this type of action.
Christian explains: “From a legal point of view, it is interesting that the District Court of Düsseldorf decided that Rapidshare has to carry out a lot of preventive actions (if the GEMA press release is correct on this point, of course). This could mean that Rapidshare has to check all of its hosted material for copyright infringements - which is nearly impossible.”
The instruction for Rapidshare to take preventative action is new, and despite another similar court case reaching a different decision. Christian explains: “Only 30 kilometers away from Düsseldorf, we’ve already had a similar law suit in Cologne. In that case the Oberlandesgericht (Higher Regional Court and Court of Appeal) decided that Rapidshare is only obliged to delete specific songs stated by GEMA. They were not obliged to take preventative action.”
“The future will tell us which interpretation of the law is correct.” Christian told us. “Perhaps in one or two years we will get a decision on this question from the Federal Court of Justice.”
As the world struggles to update its laws to cope with the digital revolution, the courts - and lawyers - are being kept very busy indeed. So back to the original question: Is Rapidshare going to be closed down - or be left with no alternative but to shut itself down?
Well - maybe……maybe not.
Christian finishes up: “I believe that 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.”
In the meantime, while the legal wheels turn and turn, Rapidshare.com and Rapidshare.de continue to operate as usual.
Previously: How to Convert Millions of BitTorrent Users to Qtrax
Next: European Court Decides FileSharers Should Stay Anonymous
98 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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I’ve lived in Germany for a while now, and the only reason the GEMA has any power is because the German politicians have NO FUCKING IDEA about technology.
As the Federal Counselor Angela Merkel put it: Germany is in dire need of IT experts.
The brain drain of tech-folk has been going on here for a while, and unless the German state starts employing people who actually know what they’re dealing with, it’s going to end up like a very very very unpleasant country to live in for people using the Internet.
FUCK the German law-system and its technophobic judges.
rs will make more if they loose
if they loose and come up with a GEMA approved copyright tracking software. how much do you think they will charge Megaupload for it?
RS is awesome. To those who get crappy speeds, get a d/l manager/accelerator. I’m downloading 30 mbit ps.
RapidShare needs to go under. The majority of internet users hate it! To you fools who think you can get 10,000 downloads a month to keep it free, you’re nuts. I had a premium account once, and hated it. Very slow! Porn should always be free! Use other freehosts!
password protecting files won’t work. Many servers don’t allow that and will delete your file immediately if they can’t see what’s in it. IF RS survives, look for them to do this.
Rapid Share is TERRIBLE!!!! It’s SPAM!!!
PingBack From
http://rapidarchive.blogspot.com/2008/02/rapidshare-to-be-forced-to-shut-down.html
rs does suck. I don’t believe in having to pay for something that should be freely given. we don’t own all this shit, everyone just shares back what is freely found or given. Torrents are the way to go… slow speeds you say? try changing your ports you newbies!!! pirating is paying for something…keep it phree!!
Rapidshare are still alive and healthy.
Here is a 30 days premium account with 4 days left to grab…
http://rs387.rapidshare.com/files/88496994/foryours.rar
good luck
same feeling..lol
To all you people saying that RS is crap: you have no clue what you’re talking about. I am paying RS for 3 months now and LOVING it: I am downloading at FULL SPEED (1.8 MB / sec) with RapGet, and am capable of finding all kinds of files there, from movies to SW to anything you can imagine. Have given up torrents since…
Why such a service should be given freely in the first place? What are you people talking about? The service’s owners have invested quite some money for their storage capacity and Internet bandwidth, it is a legit service that DELIVERS what it promises.
It is one of the very few Internet services that I have payed for and enjoyed so much. If you guys aren’t willing to pay 15 euros (or so) for 3 months’ worth of downloading, it’s your problem, not RS’s.
TRY THIS 1 YEAR PREMIUM ACCOUNT
BEST WAY TO LEGALLLY OWN A rapidshare 1 year PREMIUM ACCOUNT.
Follow these steps:
1. Create a paypal PREMIUM Account at this address. It is free;
http://www.paypal.com
When asked for credit card details simply say cancel. You do not need to fill it.
2.Then go to the following link:
http://tinyurl.com/2od76v
Join this site. It is also free. You get paid for completing surveys over there 6$ to 4$ dollars per survey and 1.25$ per referral thats a lot u will get a
premium account of 1 year in weeks time ……i myself have a 1 year premium account and now i am collecting some exta cash .
4.. Another thing you can also use paypal money to buy stuff on ebay and other shopping sites.
5. Thats is it. So Simple and I swear it works.
I learnt this from another friend and i thought it will be good for my friends here. So I thought of helping
How about GEMA just get German ISP’S to block rapidshare instead of completely shutting them down, at least the rest of the world would still enjoy it!
ROFLcopter at all you “ZOMG rapidshare is teh leet”
buncha noobs is what you are.
Dont start with the No One is Maaaking you download or pay for premium! the service is complete sh1t if one doesnt have an account now.
@56: Just look what the whole premium thing makes people do lying to get more points so you can have more premium.
@(below)references to this post:
heres some guy selling a points generator for 7$. riiiiight.
lamers.
Since when does charging money to steal make sense? when did everyone downloading media decide ‘hey, i COULD PAY FOR THIS!’ sweeeeet. f*cking rtards. or how about ‘hey, i can get payouts for the number of downloads on my files, SWEET ill host STOLEN media on that site and make money from it, all the while inconveniencing the download community with mass advertising.’
/sigh
Back to the point, RS used to be leet when wait times were reasonable, not this come back and get part2 of 15(parts) in 5 hours.
If you cant get it free and fast then move on to another site and make big business compete with the little guys, theres f*ck-TON better ddl sites, thats all that needs to be said really.
mihd,divshare,flyupload,adrive,xdrive,mediafire,etc
Guys guys guys rapidshare and torrent both are great.A heavy downloader’s only necessity is a rapidshare account and access to torrents.
Rapidshare vs Torrent
1-speed is amazing on Depends on no
premium account of seeders
2-download limit 5 gb No limit
per day
3-Much more files than
torrents( much much more) Less
So my idea is if you are into downloading stuff,get a rs account and use torrents for those files which are available so that you preserve rapidshare download limit.If you are a casual user just go for torrent,it’s free!!!
@62: you and all of you talking s*** about rs can continue to bash it as long as you want, but in the end we (rs premium users) will end up downloading more an much more faster than you, for me… well, i download a normal movie (700Mb) in less than 10 minutes, any movie… no troubles with seeds or timers or whatever just the fastest speed around which in my case is +/- 2.2Mb/s
any file…
try that with your free solution…
All those who thinks RS sucks are cheap bastards who’ve never used their premium service before. Do you really think everyone could provide services free of charge on the internet? They need money for maintaining their infrastructure and I can’t see anything wrong with that.
Quit your bitching about paying RS for dls. Torrents cannot offer you anything near the speeds RS does nor the stability of connection. The yearly account (total of 1826.25 GB) comes out to 23 GB per USD, or over 30 movies for a dollar. Thats f*cking awesome.
A WARNING TO ALL UPLOADER and DOWNLOADER USERs of rapidshare!
I used to have a rapidshare premium account until my account was permanently terminated, at the time
I clicked on a file of 845kb and it was not a music file
I do not know how I won this lucky
price the fact is that anyone now can be terminated from rapidshare.
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 10:27 PM
Subject: Account Termination
Dear RapidShare user (customer-ID:3333333333), Your Premium-Account has been permanently suspended due to pressure being put on us to do a crackdown on people uploading and downloading illegal content. Therefore your account has been disabled. RapidShare accounts uploading and downloading copyrighted content will be suspended. You may purchase another Premium-Account in the future as long as you follow our rules. Please do NOT reply to this email. This is an automated message. Sincerely, RapidShare AG - Support-Team
—–
^^^^ your account has been hacked dumbass! people are trying to phish rapidshare accounts. what they try to do is that they will make a fake rapidshare page and when you enter your password, it will send it to their email. this can be done with any site out there. to recover your account, email Rapidshare support your login details and explain what happend. they will give your account. next time you log on to the internet, try to download something called common sense. it works.
[quote comment="275226"]…continued..
and to those that say they hate rapidshare, theyr either kids who cannot afford $5 a month or something, or who want to download porn and have to wait a few hours to get it..
losers. RapidShare revolutionized one-click file hosting services..
x[/quote]
absolutely true, dont hate something u cant afford, 6 euros a month is funny price…
They should move their servers to a small undeveloped country like, lets say Buthan or Burkina Faso.
Rapidshare is the best. I have my premium account ’till July 2008 =(.
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