RapidShare Once Again Vindicated By Court
from the find-another-devil dept
Over the last few months, we've watched as the entertainment industry has started to turn its legal guns on digital locker sites, like Rapidshare, as being "the new front" for unauthorized distribution of works. They've even been able to get US politicians to condemn Rapidshare as being one of the "most notorious" sites out there. There's just one eensy weensy problem: courts around the globe keep finding what Rapidshare does to be perfectly legal. RapidShare is just a digital locker, has no index or search engine, and is pretty active in trying to stop infringement on its site. In May, a US court rejected a request for an injunction against Rapidshare, which followed a German appeals court basically saying the same thing. Now there's been another ruling in Germany that, once again, says that Rapidshare is legal, and notes that it "takes all reasonable measures to prevent movies from being distributed."To some extent, I find this amusing. The entertainment industry has kept suing anyone doing anything they don't like, rather than spending any real effort adapting. So each new generation of tools used for file sharing responds to the legal rulings, trying to make sure they don't run afoul of what got the previous generation. Sooner or later, that meant that these sites would pass all the legal checkboxes -- even if they can still be used for unauthorized infringement. So where does that leave the entertainment industry? They could have spent all this time perfecting new business models and adapting -- and done so in a way that embraced what people were doing. Instead, they've bullied their way around, pissed off tons of people, and helped define exactly how one can build a system that isn't guilty of contributory infringement, that will still be used for unauthorized file sharing.
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Filed Under: copyright, digitial lockers, germany
Companies: rapidshare
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And the only people who are really benefiting from all of this are the lawyers. Sad.
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Re:
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Re:
From the Rapidshare site:
As a result of the recent adjustments to our product and pricing model we have received a lot of feedback from our users. There was also positive response but we want to be honest with you: most answers were negative. With our adjustments we have alienated many users. As a matter of course, that was not our intention. Instead, it is our goal to introduce a system that gives our users more flexibility. However, we are happy about every single user response that we have received as this is the only way we can learn what our users really want.
If the entertainment industry learned from Rapidshare how to deal with customers they might get somewhere!
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Plan B,C and D now.
[1] Comments of Creative Community Organizations, pp. 2, March 24, 2010: http://www.dga.org/news/pr-images/2010/Joint-submission-re-IPEC.pdf; last accessed 04/25/2010.
[2] Id at 10.
[3] Id at 17.
[4] Id at 12-13.
They will keep throwing things at the wall and see what sticks.
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Rapidshare sucks
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Re: Rapidshare sucks
Why do I need to install even more crap on my system just to be able to upload files to a web site?
Where's the "I'm not a moron, and already know how to use the software I have" link?
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That's why I moved..
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Really
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Lobbyists ho!
It leaves the entertainment industry using their lobbyists to stuff money into the war chests of Congressmen who will sponsor a bill that will make these sites illegal. Then the dance will continue.
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I would say that leaves them drafting new laws.
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lol
Rapidshare, you pay for a premium password. All people upload files to rapidshare. You click the links and download will take up 100% of your download... It really is that fast.
Dropbox is a file syncing tool. Usually used by developers to share assets between remote computers.
So to say you dont use rapidshare because you like dropbox, is like me saying, i dont like cars because i like fruit.
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