Rapidshit getting reamed by court

[tickler]

Maybe we will be able to sell a bit more if the surfers can't download full DVDs & site rips.|club|

File sharing service RapidShare may find itself without a viable business model if a German court ruling stands. After getting sued by a German copyright holder, the company argued that it was doing all it could to screen out copyrighted material. The court, however, has ruled that its efforts were insufficient, raising questions about whether doing anything that was legally sufficient could be done without incurring enough costs to sink the company.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081001-german-court-says-rapidshare-must-get-proactive-on-copyrighted-content.html

[J. Falcon - ACW]

More of these fuckers are getting caught. Always good to hear.

[emac]

That's definitely a good news to everyone.

[spacemanspiff]

Free access to copyrighted material is what makes the model work. Weeding out all of that would make the model fail anyway. I don't think any of the file sharing sites are doing any real "screening". It's all "if we get a notice from the owner of the copyrighted material, we'll take it down". Retro active, not proactive.

That puts the burden on the material owner to police the file share/tube sites. You don't see that with any other copyrighted/trademarked material. Levis isn't out patrolling the streets looking for counterfeit bluejeans.

Maybe if one of these cases sets a precedent that knowledge of the way the model really works equals culpable liability, the house of stolen cards will come crumbling down.