Rapidshare being sued!

#1

GEMA obtains injunctions against data exchange services

The German collecting society GEMA has obtained from the District
Court in Cologne temporary injunctions against the operator of the
data exchange services www.rapidshare.de and www.rapidshare.com. The
latter is said to have used copyright protected works of GEMA members
in an unlawful fashion. The services make virtual storage space
available into which users can upload content that is thereby made
publicly available to other users. GEMA spokesman Hans-Herwig Geyer
told heise online that the services should not be allowed to continue
to operate in their present form. The collecting society is now
demanding that the operator provide details on how many copyright
protected works of GEMA members are currently stored on the said sites.

According to GEMA, the service www.rapidshare.de in particular has at
times boasted of making some 15 million files available to its users.
The operator had however failed to obtain from GEMA a license for
making copyright protected files available, the collecting society
spokesman observed. To date RapidShare had claimed not to have any
knowledge of the content uploaded by the users and of not being in a
position to control the same, the spokesman continued. Through its
injunctions the District Court in Cologne had now however made it
clear to the company that the fact that it was the users and not the
operator of the services that uploaded the content onto the sites did
not, from a legal point of view, lessen the operator¢€™s liability for
copyright infringements that occurred within the context of the
services, the spokesman added.

Harald Heker, the chairman of the executive board of GEMA, believes
the court's decisions will have repercussions on the way "Web 2.0
services" such as YouTube and MySpace will be treated in future. What
the decisions according to Mr. Heker show is that "the mere
circumstance of shifting acts of use to users and the purported
inability of the operator to control content do not relieve the
operator of a service from the copyright liability he/she/it possesses
for the content made available for download from the operator's
website(s)." (Robert W. Smith) / (anw/c't)

#2

Wow, this is getting ridiculous...

I guess I just don't fucking get it...Maybe I'm too simple minded or something...

But...If someone breaks into my house....And just as I come home I see them speed off in a Chevy van...Can I then turn and sue Chevrolet for fucking making a van, and then cite my reasons as being that they made it possible for robbers to steal my shit..?

God man, when will it end..?

#3

Yea, this is so stupid. Hopefully this won't affect the site at all

#4

Unfortunately it's the "Stupid" things that lawyers make their excessively large living out of.

This is just the sort of thing that some bright spark in a lawyers practice will come up with to try and make a name for him/herself.

There is no thought at all as to the impact that this will have on the "normal" human beings around them, we don't maetter as long as someone either makes a name or lots of money - preferably both.

Don't hold your breath gents, this could drag on for a long, long time.

#5

And this is the German legal system we're talking about - they're crazy..
Almost as bad as the EU itself..

#6

that is indeed sad news. i guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. /sad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad.gif" />

maybe file sharers should look for servers in Russia or China which are beyond the reach of any copyright laws.

Bot · #7

QUOTE(AYHJA @ Jan 22 2007, 04:42 PM) Wow, this is getting ridiculous...

I guess I just don't fucking get it...Maybe I'm too simple minded or something...

But...If someone breaks into my house....And just as I come home I see them speed off in a Chevy van...Can I then turn and sue Chevrolet for fucking making a van, and then cite my reasons as being that they made it possible for robbers to steal my shit..?

God man, when will it end..?

You can't really compare the two...

It is a stupid lawsuit, but there's not much else they can do. The people who run Rapidshare are facilitating those who illegal swap software or material by operating Rapidshare. I'm almost positive when Rapidshare was first created it was not created with that intend; people just exploited it later on. The only option GEMA really has is to suit Rapidshare, and hopefully shut them down. I don't think there's really a way they could track down the users who are uploading illegal content since so much of it, if not all of it, is uploaded anonymously.

So... sucks to be the people running the site. lol Hopefully they're able to continue running because I don't wanna have to use Megaupload. lol

#8

Either way K, you can't blame RapidShare...If that is true for RS, then it may as well be true for everything else connected to it, and in a similar fashion...There are things in this world that exist almost certainly to do things that are illegal, yet they are allowed to exist...

For instance, Zig-Zag rolling papers..

Think about all the people in your life you have ever seen smoking a cigarette...And then think of the last time you saw someone smoking a home made sigg...As long as RapidShare has a legal use, and it does, it should be exempt from such law-suits...Because something is abused doesn't mean that was its intent...Same thing w/blank CD/DVD manufacturers....A few put their wedding videos on them, quite a few put the shit they download from bigblackbootycheeks.com on them...Just the way it works...Bootlegging is a HUGE thing, but you go after the ones that have broken the rules, not the tools they use...

Bot · #9

I thought of CDs last night. The funny thing is it doesn't stop with CDs. They also sell DVD recorders too. lol

But CDs and DVD recorders are different for several reasons: 1) If I'm not mistaken it was proven that these could be used for legal means, and therefore are protected now. 2) Companies are now coming out with better copyright protection, which prevents people from illegally ripping CDs and DVDs.

I know when I first bought my DMB Stand Up CD I couldn't play it in any music program. It would just skip, and I couldn't rip it.

There are people who are coming up with ways to defeat this protection... but what they're doing is illegal. lol

Sites like RapidShare aren't protected, and there's no way to install copyright protection.

#10

A's right!

The effects this will have will be to destroy a large number of websites out there. This type of lawsuit will set the stage for attacks against any site that allows individuals to upload files on their own computers. How will companies "PROTECT" their copyrighted materials unless they can claim "OWNERSHIP" of all copies electronic or physical. If that happens it will give any company the right to invade your computer to retrieve its property any time it feels fit to do so without being hindered by invasion of privacy laws. Also, the time of the little guy making it big (Google, MySpace, Ebay) will be all but gone. Forums like this one will be attackable for providing links to copyrighted material. The ball will only keep rolling and getting larger all the time until the internet becomes illegal for anyone but large monitored corporations to run websites.

Just a little conspiracy theory.
:devil: