RapidShare ordered to remove copyrighted content

It's one of the worst-kept secrets on the internet that virtually any album can be downloaded, freely and illegally, by doing a Google search for, say, "Coldplay rapidshare", "Radiohead rapidshare" or "Beyoncé rapidshare". But whereas RapidShare can seem like a magic word, an abracadabra that leads to an ad-festooned free downloads site, it is, in fact, a company. And although it is the general impression that everything available on RapidShare is free, it just so happens that lots of users share illegal files.

A court ruling this week, however, may have sounded the death knell for RapidShare's business model. Germany's Hamburg district court has ruled that RapidShare uses insufficient measures to protect against piracy. The court ruled that the service must not just remove material for which it receives copyright complaints, it must proactively check content before it is made available online, at least in the case of users with previous infringements.

Whereas American "safe harbour" legislation allows companies like YouTube to put their fingers in their ears and go "la la la", denying knowledge of copyrighted material, Germany holds its filesharing services to a higher standard. The court dismissed the safeguards RapidShare already has in place as ineffective – an automated filter and a limited number of full-time staff. It was also unmoved by RapidShare's arguments about the expense of better filtering. "A business model that doesn't use common methods of prevention cannot claim the protection of the law," stated the ruling.

Of course, the end of RapidShare would hardly spell the end of online piracy. There are many more services competing in the same grey area of "sending files". Even if searching for "Coldplay rapidshare" stopped returning results, "Coldplay megaupload", "Coldplay yousendit" and "Coldplay sendspace" aren't any more difficult to find.


Original article here