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.

Filed Under: copyright, digitial lockers, germany
Companies: rapidshare