TorrentFreak

A German court has ruled that file-hosting services can be held liable for the copyright infringements of their users if certain conditions are met. The ruling was reached in a case involving Swiss-based RapidShare and video games company Atari, after the latter accused the former of providing unlawful access to the game Alone in the Dark.

This week, file-hosting service RapidShare published an anti-piracy manifesto with guidelines on how cyberlocker and cloud hosting sites should conduct their business going forward. But the proposals from the Swiss-based service, which go far beyond their requirements under the law, received a lukewarm reception from rightsholders who say they don’t go far enough. RapidShare believes that they do, and that rightsholders should focus on sites that deliberately generate revenue from infringement.

Swiss-based file-hosting service RapidShare has released an anti-piracy manifesto to serve as a guideline for cyberlocker and cloud hosting sites. Partly motivated by the criminal indictment of Megaupload, RapidShare stresses that they will do all they can to counter piracy, even if this is at the expense of user privacy and convenience.

A Higher Regional Court in Germany has ruled that file-hosting service RapidShare operates legally in Germany. The verdict is the result of a long-standing legal battle between the Swiss-based file-hosting service and music rights group GEMA. It’s not all good for RapidShare though, as the company now has to monitor external websites for incoming links to infringing files.

A Higher Regional Court in Germany has ruled that file-hosting service RapidShare must proactively filter thousands of files uploaded by its users. The Court confirmed three separate verdicts by a lower court, in cases that were started by book publishers and a music rights group. RapidShare has yet to decide whether it will appeal the verdicts, and informs TorrentFreak that there’s also positive news to report.

Earlier today we reported how RapidShare is throttling accounts of free users to drive away pirates. Now, just a few hours later, the popular file-hosting service is entirely unavailable for users without a premium account. All download links go to a ” 404 Not Found” page instead (example). For paying users the service works normally. [...]

During the last week, users who rely on RapidShare’s free service have been complaining of reduced download speeds. Several theories have been circulating, mainly focusing on the file-hoster trying to drive users to take up premium accounts. But according to RapidShare the reason is simple – to drive pirates away from their service. Fast download speeds are still available for free, but they come at a different kind of cost.