In recent months Rapidshare has aggressively targeted search engines and indexers that abused the company’s trademark and facilitated copyright infringement. These actions are part of their campaign to create goodwill with the entertainment industry, but by doing so RapidShare is also shooting itself in the foot. As a result of the domain seizures the site is no longer the leading file-hoster.
RapidShare takes all reasonable measures to prevent movies from being distributed through its web-service, a German court ruled yesterday. The Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf overturned the earlier decision of a local district court in a second case brought by movie outfit Capelight Pictures.
After filing more than two dozen World Intellectual Property Organization disputes in recent months, Rapidshare has come away with substantial victories. After pursuing several sites it claim abused its trademarks and offered unfair competition, the file-storage site has now taken control of many of these. However, not all complaints were successful.
Two weeks ago RapidShare announced a change in the pricing scheme for their premium members. Starting this month, account holders would’ve been required to pay an amount based on their daily usage volume along with a requirement to skip between various packages to avoid overpayment. This planned change resulted in a revolt among RapidShare users which forced the company to revisit its plans.
RapidShare will no longer offer incentives to users who share popular content. After having stopped cash payouts for their rewards program some time ago, RapidShare has now decided to discontinue the entire program. The file-hosting service cites complaints by copyright holders that the rewards were facilitating piracy as the reason for this move.
The popular file-hosting service RapidShare is not guilty of copyright infringement, the United States District Court of California has ruled. The ruling is an important victory for RapidShare, which has been increasingly targeted by the entertainment industries.
RapidShare is not liable for acts of copyright infringement committed by its users, a German court ruled yesterday. The Dusseldorf Court of Appeals overturned the earlier decision of a local district court in a case brought by the movie outfit Capelight Pictures.
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