RapidShare’s CEO Bobby Chang has left the company with immediate effect. The Switzerland based file-hoster announced that Chang, who headed the company for years, is no longer deemed the right leader to successfully serve the interests of users and partners in the future.
File-hosting service RapidShare has seen its request to have the case against adult media company Perfect 10 heard under German law denied. Perfect 10 has accused RapidShare of being the biggest infringing paysite of all time and earning revenue from its content, an accusation the file-hoster denies. The case will now be heard in a U.S. District Court next month.
The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store where links to infringing material will redirect to. The plan is an attempt to bridge the gap between copyright holders and users of the site who distribute infringing material.
For many years Rapidshare was considered to be a safe way for people to download copyrighted content without having to face repercussions. Recently, however, the company has been actively going after users that upload copyrighted files through the service by terminating accounts.
Six book publishers have gained an injunction against file-hosting company, RapidShare. The Swiss-based ‘cyberlocker’ service must monitor user uploads to ensure that around 148 titles, many of them textbooks, are never made available to its users. Failure to do so could result in $339,000 fines, or even jail time for company bosses.
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.
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