Barefootsies

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Enough Said.

"Would you rather live like a king for a year or like a prince forever?"

seeandsee

rapid money

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Mutt

i'm on Perfect 10's side because we all know what he says about Rapidshare is 100% the truth but Norm is going to get his ass handed to him in court - and fast. The DMCA is pathetic but it's the law. Rapidshare does respond quickly to proper takedown notices. Him going into court like an infant having a temper tantrum saying it's not his job to supply Rapidshare with links to copyright infringing material on their servers is gonna piss off any judge.

the only chance any of these lawsuits against tube sites have of winning is if you prove that the tube sites themselves were uploading copyright infringing materials. I don't think there is any principle of law where a judge can decide that no law has been broken by the defendant but where he can see that the plaintiff has been damaged greatly and there's nobody else to blame so he finds against the defendant. Bottom line in most cases it's going to be the judge/jury deciding 'you plaintiff do have a beef, unfortunately for you it's not against Rapidshare, it's against the DMCA, I can't do anything about that, you're out of luck here'

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munki

I'll be holding my breath...

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Barefootsies

Cross your toes.

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Enough Said.

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chaze

law suits are such BS, this shit should be dealt with amicably. If they had copyrighted content prove it and take it down.

Dirty Dane

DMCA is not german law. German court has already ordered Rapidshare to check content. At least for dot de.

kane

The problem is they take it down and within a few days it is right back up.

In the modern era it seems if you create content and want to keep it from being illegally downloaded you have to hire an entire staff that does nothing but police various sites and force them to take it down. Pretty sad.

Barefootsies

True dat.

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Enough Said.

"Would you rather live like a king for a year or like a prince forever?"

bronco67

Another "I'm just a storage site" excuse.

Even more disheartening than the existence of these sites, is the fact that the majority of people will steal digital content without even thinking about it -- yet won't walk into a Best Buy and steal 50 DVDs, mostly because they won't get handcuffed and sent to jail.

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Paul Markham

Truth.

When 90% of what you store is copyright infringing why is it not your fault?

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ottopottomouse

I thought that was what shut down the .de site and made RapidShare move to Switzerland.

Can't see Perfect 10 winning if they won't supply RapidShare with links to stuff they say is on the servers so it can be taken down.

RapidShare scanning for stuff on the servers or blocking uploads isn't exactly going to be an easy job. The MD5 blacklist they maintain wipes out identical mirrors of things but is easy to overcome by anybody that wants to re-upload something again. For as long as they can get away with it they are just going to hide behind it being the responsibility of the uploader to not be naughty.

Screwed Up

RS should at least have a list of blacklisted scene names/DVD titles. That alone should weed out a whole lot of pirated content. Or at least make it more difficult for surfers to find it and for SE's to list it...

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SpongeBub

That is ridiculous - not providing specific links and then claiming infringement. No links, no infringement. Perfect 10's lawyers must have something else up their sleeve.

Loch

Really? That is the dumb answer of the bloody month.

Lawsuits when won set a precedence like nothing else.
IF all of the little scoundrels out there knew they "worst scenario" would be kindly asked to take it down you sir truly would be out of business, so would i!

Not to mention that you can make good money suing people that fuck with you.

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Loch

They actually dont have to, i believe the point here is that Rapidshare do not have a fucking clue what is stored on their network.
Im sure that perfect 10 knows exactly where it is and have that documented.

But why should they tell Rapidshare? I wouldent.

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Loch

So buuhuuuuuu its too much work for rapidshare
&
The responsability of a 14-18 year old uploader


Riiiight

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callista

Simple legal fix I'd like to see:

Make it a law that ALL file sharing hosts are required to not only scan files for viruses but to open each and every zip/rar/7z/etc file uploaded and look at the content before making it accessible to download.

It would take less than a minute per file to see if it contains copyrighted content and you wouldn't have to have a high school degree to do it.

With the money they make they can afford a small team that just does this so the wait is minimal before legit files are approved.

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Loch

Agreed!
As for the added cost of labor etc they would have to up their prices, but guess what thats business/life......

Fucking criminals living in the grey zone of the law.

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Klen

That was actually done in napster case,which is why i wonder why now similar services are protected with dmca.

RaiderCash_Dominik

I would like to hear FatFoo's take on this.

Dirty Dane

And if they do not win: It's also political when there are ongoing worldwide discussions like ACTA. Laws must be changed. To prove a case is different from prove a cause.

Mutt

ACTA which will essentially replace the DMCA is being fast tracked by governments around the world. The DMCA was written at a time when nobody envisioned YouTube, Rapidshare etc - now we know and ACTA will turn the tables on pirates and those who aid and abet them, this 'safe harbor' the ISP's have been hiding behind is going bye bye.

ACTA won't end piracy, nothing will end piracy - all I want is a law that allows me to go to court against ISP's, forum owners, tube site owners, web hosting companies without the cards stacked against me. Even if I had a million dollars of fuck you money sitting in my bank account I wouldn't sue anybody at the present time - the DMCA protects thieves, not me. I think all these lawsuits against tube sites are going to fail or at best be disappointing partial victories where the copyright owners only get damages for videos they can prove were uploaded by the owners/employees of the tube sites.

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Mutt

Technology companies fear new legal challenges will come in international trade agreement

By Joelle Tessler, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


WASHINGTON - Companies across the technology industry - from Internet access providers to social networking sites to video-sharing services - are bracing for this week's release of a draft of a trade agreement that they fear could undermine all sorts of online activities.

The agreement, being negotiated by the United States and nearly a dozen trading partners, is intended to create an international framework to crack down on counterfeiting, copyright violations and other intellectual property theft. But skeptics warn that it could chill free speech and other online expression by making technology companies liable for the misdeeds of their users.

"If online platforms themselves are held liable in a way that is overly broad, the platforms themselves will start screening and censoring or scaling back how open to user participation they are," said David Sohn, senior policy counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, an interest group that advocates for civil liberties online. "They will have to exercise really tight control."

The Bush administration began negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, in the fall of 2007 in an effort to harmonize intellectual property protections across different nations. The far-reaching agreement would encompass everything from counterfeit pharmaceuticals to fake Prada bags to online piracy of music and movies. Once ratified, trade agreements take full effect and a country can face complaints for noncompliance.

Since early on, the talks have been mired in controversy. For one thing, countries that are considered the biggest sources of intellectual property theft - such as China and Indonesia - are not participating. Nations taking part include the European Union member states, Japan, Korea, Canada, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and Australia.

The negotiations have been held behind closed doors, with no opportunity for public comment or outside input. Earlier versions of the trade agreement have been leaked, but the first official draft won't be released until Wednesday - even though last week's talks in New Zealand marked the eighth round of negotiations. The next round will take place in Switzerland in June.

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in Internet and electronic commerce issues, argues that because the agreement could reshape intellectual property laws in so many countries, the proper forum for such negotiations is the World Intellectual Property Organization. WIPO negotiations are more open to public scrutiny and include countries where much of the counterfeiting takes place, he noted.

"Anyone in a democratic country should be uncomfortable when governments go behind closed doors to negotiate an agreement that will ultimately have a significant impact on domestic law," Geist said.

Many technology companies fear that ACTA could undermine existing legal precedent and intellectual property laws in the United States, including the landmark 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The current U.S. legal framework includes important protections for Internet service providers and other technology companies when their users are accused of copyright infringement. Although current law requires companies to remove infringing content, it limits their liability.

Most big technology companies are hesitant to comment on the record about ACTA until they see an official draft, but privately they say that immunity is critical not just for Internet service providers such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., but also for any online company that hosts user-generated content. That includes social networking sites such as Facebook, video-sharing sites such as Google Inc.'s YouTube and even the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

The darkest fear of the technology companies is that ACTA contains provisions that would require them to cut off access to users who violate copyright protections and possibly would hold the companies liable for violations.

The dangers of such "secondary liability" were underscored by a recent court ruling in Italy, which held three Google executives criminally responsible for hosting an online video of an autistic teenager being bullied, said Sohn of the Center for Democracy & Technology.

Sohn also said he worries that the trade agreement will exclude another "safeguard" in U.S. law - the "fair use" doctrine, which allows limited use of copyright-protected material for commentary, criticism, research, teaching and news reporting.

"While this is being characterized as an anti-counterfeiting agreement, it is really a copyright deal with rules that will affect the daily lives of millions of people both online and in the digital realm," Geist said.

ACTA skeptics aren't only worried that it will bring more-restrictive rules to the U.S. Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director for Public Knowledge, another public interest group, fears that ACTA could also export strict, punitive copyright enforcement measures that exist in U.S. law to other countries. That could include high statutory damage awards, he said.

To be sure, ACTA has plenty of defenders. In November, a long list of media companies and trade groups, including the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, sent a letter to Congress expressing support for the agreement.

ACTA, they wrote, has the potential to "preserve high value American jobs, and create new ones" and "buttress our country's leading position in the creation, publishing and distribution of software, video games, films, music, books, television programs, journals, visual materials and other works protected by copyright."

The office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which is negotiating ACTA on behalf of the U.S., said in a statement that it is working to implement "President Obama's commitment to aggressively protect American intellectual property overseas" and is "respecting the balance struck by the U.S. Congress on these issues."

The trade representative added that secondary liability for copyright infringement already exists in U.S. and foreign laws. ACTA, it hopes, would "protect Internet intermediaries from secondary liability if they play by the rules."

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ottopottomouse

Not boohoo, I wasn't protecting them, all I meant was that its hard to police the sheer amount of stuff that gets uploaded there.

I'd not thought of the put every file in pending until it's been scanned / opened / snooped on by the Stasi and noted down for future crimes that havn't been invented yet idea but eventually I expect that is the way it will go.

Until some legal authority manages to force them to check everything and makes it definitely 100% RapidShare's responsibility to check what it is they are offering downloaders they aren't going to want to fuck up their own piracy based business model by policing stuff any more than they actually have to.

You can't make a law that only covers one specific thing it always ends up having a knock on effect that nobody had properly thought about. Forcing RapidShare to check absolutely everything that ends up on their servers will also have a knock on effect to ordinary web hosts. What's going to happen when you can't ftp stuff onto your own site because someone in India has to check it all due to someone rushing through badly thought out legislation?

Tickler

I think it's pretty simple.

Force these file sharing sites to be called websites, not hosts. Their servers/hosting may still be protected, but their website isn't.

That removes their safe harbor provision as soon as they serve a download page.


And as I remember, lawsuits don't require as much evidence in the USA to win. Remember OJ. So if they convince a jury that those bad guys are screwing us, they still may get awarded a ton of money.

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Dirty Dane

That are some valid points. But also black and white.

I think the solution to that problem, is to make the law reasonable and focus on the technology parts. If the service proves to attract and serve repeated crimes, there should be laws that automatically force the service and it's users into self regulation.
In the end, it's not about the content, but who committed a crime. Identification and requirements to cooperate with authorities/copyrighter must be priority. Failure to comply, should treaten their entire business.

Argos88

rapidshare is switching over to VOD.. and pay per view..

kane

Where is Gideon. . . because you guys do realize the VCR is legal right?

xmas13

Riffhard

What kind of quarrels could a bowling site have with Rapidshare?

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