RapidShare tracks worth $34 million
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- In a ruling described by the Hollywood Reporter as a “major victory” for German collection agency GEMA, upload site Rapidshare has been ordered to pay €24 million ($34 million) for copyright infringement.
“In what could prove a key precedent, the court found Rapidshare, and by extension similar file-sharing sites, bear principle responsibility for ensuring copyright-protected material is not illegally posted on their servers,” says the story.
“If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days,” p2pnet posted, quoting Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich following unofficial online release of the band’s Death Magnetic.
On March 14 Gulli editor MSX reported a police raid at the house of someone who’d uploaded the album to Rapidshare a day before the worldwide release.
Now, Rapidshare, “is responsible for ensuring that a list of 5,000 copyrighted music tracks aren’t made available on its site for download again,” says Music Ally, adding:
“This means that the copyright holder is no longer required to perform the ongoing and complex checks,” says a statement from GEMA. The court also ruled that Rapidshare’s existing precautions to prevent illegal sharing of music files were not sufficient. Rapidshare has responded by suggesting that the courts of appeal are likely to restrict the scope of this decision, though.”
It has Rapidshare COO Bobby Chang (right) stating:
“For this reason, we think that it would make more sense to work together to provide music fans with the right services at the right price and to open up a new source of income for music-markets on the internet.”
UPDATE:- “Rapidshare wasn’t fined to 24 Millionen Euro!” says Gulli editor Firebird77 in an email from Germany, adding:
“The Landgericht Hamburg only decided that the value of claim in this case of about 5.000 MP3s is 24 Millionen Euros.”
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Hollywood Reporter – Court rules against German file-sharing site, June 23, 2009
p2pnet – RapidShare accused of sharing user data, April 28, 2009
Music Ally – Court rules for GEMA against Rapidshare file-hosting service, June 23, 2009
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June 24th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
this deciding about the value is important sofar because in german civil law, the loser regularily has to pay the winners attorney costs. These lawyers cost are calculated based upon the value of the items at issue in a case. So by deciding that the value is 24 million, the lawyers for gema will write a bill based on that high number.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
In order to prevent near-certain takedowns, a lot of copyrighted files uploaded to Rapidshare have cryptic filenames and are password-protected. Is Rapidshare supposed to somehow know these files are infringing and filter them out also?
June 24th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
In others news, car manufacturers plan on taking Transport Canada to court for not being proactive in preventing stolen cars from driving on Canadian roads. They demand that officials implement some means of photographing the VIN numbers of each vehicle as it drives by, automatically shutting down any detected as having been purloined from their lots.