The Regional Court in Hamburg, Germany, has ruled that file-hosting service Rapidshare must proactively filter certain content. Music industry outfit GEMA asked the court to ban Rapidshare from making 5,000 tracks from its catalogue available on the Internet. The court estimated the value of the tracks at $34 million.
In Germany, the file-hosting service Rapidshare has handed over the personal details of alleged copyright infringers to several major record labels. The information is used to pursue legal action against the Rapidshare users and at least one alleged uploader saw his house raided.
In March 2007, a court ruled that Rapidshare could be held responsible for copyright violations committed by users who uploaded copyrighted material to their servers. Now, rumors are circulating that Rapidshare has been shutdown – this does not seem to be the case.
