The Regional Court in Hamburg, Germany, has fined file-hosting service Rapidshare a hefty €24 million and has ruled that the company must start proactively filtering certain content.
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For this case, Rapidshare will appeal to higher courts and most likely restrict the scope of the decisions made by the Regional Court in Hamburg. Rapishare COO Bobby Chang, according to TorrentFreak, said “it would make more sense to offer music fans the right products and services at the right price to open up a new source of income for music-markets on the Internet.”

The source
It's amazing Rapidshare keeps getting away with a large percentage of what it does.

I know it's very easy for people to archive and password content that negates any filtering they decide to implement - but this would still significantly slow down blatant copyright infringement.

I do like the COO's quote though at the end of the TC article. I agree that a large proportion of piracy does legitimately result from poor and archaic business models and distribution chains. However, there will always be your 13yo kids who receive little pocket money, don't work and don't have a credit card that want the latest new album and hence won't pay for it.

gee who didn't see that happening


I'm guessing that they were hoping their tech would be bought by a Corp before things got 'out of hand'

last edited by koopz at 23:27:15 24/Jun/09

Yeah, I dunno. Depends on their revenue I guess. 24mil Eur though - it would be a lot cheaper to show that you were actively employing people to manually filter content. Lets say you employed 5 people a year, wouldn't cost much compared to $24mil fine.

I know that some stuff I have gone to download has been removed due to 'copyright infringement' - so they must be doing something I guess. Obviously not enough to please GEMA - although that is about as militant as the RIAA when it comes to prosecuting.

viva la resistance

Lets say you employed 5 people a year, wouldn't cost much compared to $24mil fine.

WHAT ARE YOU PAYING THESE PEOPLE?!?!?!!?

Why do these people keep hosting sites like this in countries where they've proven they're just smash them with laws?!

This is a prime opportunity for some country that doesn't feel like obeying the US to throw down some new cables, offer cheap hosting with no government interference, and create some real datahavens. Except I just outlined the exact plot of the Cryptonomicon, I can't see why they're not doing it!@#

No s*** trog - and I wonder why impoverished nations aren't doing it - it doesn't cost THAT much to set up, and copyright laws are totally bound by local agreement of what constitutes a violation.

I guess the US would declare a War on Warez or something and smash em.

Yeah, is 5mil EUR unreasonable for a database analyst? :-P Hehehe.

I pretty much agree with the 'data haven' idea to be honest. But what about the basic infrastructure? I s'pose if they can send out a billion spam from Africa then they have enough basic infrastructure.

4chan will halve it's traffic if RapidShare dies.

I pretty much agree with the 'data haven' idea to be honest. But what about the basic infrastructure? I s'pose if they can send out a billion spam from Africa then they have enough basic infrastructure.

Well taking the easy approach (which assumes the US won't declare war and bomb them) all they need is a big building with a s***load of air conditioning. I'd say middle eastern countries would be a good place to put these, because they're sorta central, they have no interest in enforcing US copyright law, I assume they have lots of sun and can use solar power to help the power burden.. piece of cake!

But what about the basic infrastructure? I s'pose if they can send out a billion spam from Africa then they have enough basic infrastructure.

There is basic infrastructure to support data warehousing in the capitals of a lot of developing nations.

These places do have money, just not as much of it as the West. Its also usually money that's acquired at the expense of the people at the bottom of the line. I'm assuming that there is a lot of foreign aid (and outright bribes) that is contingent on their Governments and assorted despots not rocking the boat too much.