Rapidshare Ordered To Clean Up

[PeteB]

Not that ayone here will be affected because everything we share/download is totally legal, right?

Achtung! RapidShare ordered to filter all user uploads

File hosting service RapidShare has just been hit with a €24 million fine and a requirement that it apply strong, proactive content filtering to user uploads. There's no copyright infringement "safe harbor" in Germany for companies that don't use "common methods of prevention."

Currently, this ruling only applies to uploads. It doesn't take a genuis to figure out that at some point there will be interest in the illegal content already there.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...re-hit-with-24m-fine-content-filter-rules.ars

 

[Schtumple]

For gods sake, my service expires today, dunno if I wanna renew if there's a chance they could go under... so i can legally download files, obviously...

 

[weckart]

This presumably only refers to the rapidshare.de domain, since the rapidshare.com servers are not based in Germany.

 

[Marble]

I'm curious how this can possibly be done. RAR files, ZIP files, password protected archives. How is rapidshare supposed to screen all this stuff?

 

[Schtumple]

I'm guessing how they currently do it, some staff searches for the most popular things, i.e. Sims 3, and deletes everything with that file name, regardless of contents, RS can delete any file they want, because it's on their property, they're liable, plus you sign away your rights for the files you upload when you sign up

 

[opinioncircle]

I was always amazed how Pirate Bay got some heat while Rapid Share gave me the same service, pretty much...

 

[TBi]

I'm guessing how they currently do it, some staff searches for the most popular things, i.e. Sims 3, and deletes everything with that file name, regardless of contents, RS can delete any file they want, because it's on their property, they're liable, plus you sign away your rights for the files you upload when you sign up

Yup but you can just put up an encrypted rar file called "happy rar.rar" and they won't have a clue what is inside it.

All you have to do is search around google and some forum will say "sims 3 in happy rar.rar , password XXXXX".

The problem here is that they can't just delete the file even if they read this on a forum. Anyone can say the above about any file. Whether it is actually sims 3 or not.

NOTE: not picking on Sims 3 for any reason

 

[mc3s]

In a far more reaching conclusion of this I guess it's going to cost a hell of a lot more money to own and operate a site that allows any sort of user content. In Germany anyway. Where does this end then? Does every image uploaded on any other site need to be approved because the uploader may not have rights to it?

They admit that not only was it against the site's TOS to post copyrighted material but they were also actively enforcing it. Guess that's not good enough anymore.

 

[fily]

Impossible to enforce. As the comment made above states, not all files are necessarily named after what they really are. Half the time, it's an abbreviation, like War of the Worlds would be WOTW. What are they going to do, download and check every file? Fat chance.

 

[0098386]

Exactly, it's always possible to have a forum link to a file with a name no more suspicious than a series of letters or whatever. People will still get the file...

I'm interested to see how this all pans out.

 

[spaceboots06]

I was always amazed how Pirate Bay got some heat while Rapid Share gave me the same service, pretty much...

It's actually quite different. Rapidshare provided downloading while with The Pirate Bay you had to upload information too. I always had letters in the mail because I uploaded copy protected information, not downloaded it.