RapidShare data controversy: II
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- “If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days,” p2pnet posted on Tuesday, quoting Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich fron last year following unofficial online release of the band’s Death Magnetic afer reportedly being sold in a French shop.
Now, we went on, “it appears Death Magnetic has become a police magnet”.
That was because RapidShare, a “massive upload destination” allegedly gave the identity of a user to a major label in Germany, the end result being a police raid.
Our mates Gulli.com over in Germany carried the original story. We had a look at the Google translation, which was no help.
Now, however, Gulli editor Firebird 77 has come through with his own German-to-English translation.
Thanks 
Here it is »»»
A few weeks ago, we published an article in which we evolved our thesis, that the civil law based information claim can be used to get the Uploader-Details from One-click Hosters.
We received the confirmation of our thesis via email, which shows us we were right.
Already on 14. March our gulli-editor MSX reported about a house raid, which took place by an uploader of Rapidshare.
The person had uploaded the Album “Death Magnetic” from Metallica onto the Filehoster, one day before the worldwide release of the album.
It took a few weeks, until the house raid was proceeded at the uploaders home and the order of the judge, to raid the house, was soon after that posted in a forum, where it got into the hands of my colleague MSX.
At first view, it seemed like an ordinary judge decision, with the detail it was ordered against an Uploader of Rapidshare.
There could have been thousand ways the public prosecutor could have got the IP address of the person. The scanned decision was transmitted to me by my colleague, so I had the chance to take a closer look at it and could see how that happened.
An email, which was forwardded to us soon after that and was sent from the Support of Rapidshare, confirmed our suspicion: The civil law based information claim had to be used to get the IP address. This information claim was implemented 01.09.2008 and gives rightsholders the ability to bypass the public prosecutors to get to the IP addresses of suspected copyright infringers.
A list of IP addresses can be brought to a judge and if he signs the civil law-based information claim, the providers have to tell the names an adresses to the given IP addresses. But until now, it was only used for P2P users and Providers.
Now it obviously seems, that it can also be used for something else.
A short time later, after we’d investigated further, we published an article about the whole facts explainingthe process, that the rightsholders apparently tried to use with the civil law based information claim.
Filehosters with servers in Germany can be forced to hand over IP addresses of alleged copyright infringers, due to this information claim, but we haven’t been able to get written confirmation and contact with the prosecutor’s office, which requested the house raid, was still without any outcome. However, we received a pdf in an email that backed up our thesis.
It shows a ceas e& desist letter from the German lawyers Rasch. Lawyer Rasch fights together with his company ProMedia against Filesharer and also has an intensive contact to the Rapidshare AG.
It was known for a long time that ProMedia owns a deletion tool which allows them to terminate Uploaders that have taken place at Rapidshare, if they infringe copyrights.
The cease & desist letter also talks about Uploads at Rapidshare.com. The letter tells the user uploaded the files twice, after they got deleted the first time. The most interesting thing is however, this:
As you can see in the second paragraph, the lawyer contacted the German providers, the Deutsche Telekom AG, as well as Rapidshare AG through the § 101 UrhG.
This paragraph represents the civil law based information claim. As it follows, the district court Bielefeld signed the order. The Uploader was accused of uploading music-tracks for which the majorm labels are the rightsholders.
The uploader is accused of uploading the TOP 100 Music-Charts. The value of claim for an MP3 is about 10.000 Euro in Germany at the moment. 100 Tracks, 10.000 Euros. Finishes at 1.000.000 Euro value of claim. If the uploader gets sued and looses, he has costs of about 40.000 (about $63,145 Canadian) to find.
It seems the German content industry has found the ultimate weapon against copyright infringers, with the civil law based information claim. The only factor that is still not absolutely clear is: under what circumstances can it be used? The most probable assumption is the location of the servers.
At the moment, Firebird77 adds, there’s a lot of discussion on whether or not the location of the servers enabled § 101 UrhG to be applied and meanwhile:
“Rapidshare AG has handed out a press release, in which they are confirming that they hand over user-data according to § 101 UrhG.
“The COO, Bobby Chang, also mentions that in his opinion, every filehoster provider in the world can be forced to hand out data, if the enquiry for the transaction comes from Germany.”
However, Firebird77 says Gulli isn’t happy with that and plans to keep looking for solid and reliable information.
So stay tuned.
[PS - I made a few grammatical changes in Firebird77's translation. If I made mistakes, I apologise - Jon]
p2pnet – RapidShare accused of sharing user data, April 28, 2009
happy days – Metallica, The Pirate Bay interview row, September 4, 2008
Gulli.com – Abmahnung für Uploader dank Zivilrechtlichem Auskunftsanspruch, April 25, 2009
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