The Regional Court in Hamburg, Germany, has fined file-hosting service Rapidshare a hefty €24 million ($34 million) and has ruled that the company must start proactively filtering certain content. The case was brought on by copyright protection association GEMA, which claims it represent over 65,000 composers, authors and music publishers across the globe.
Update: looks like we jumped the gun on this one. The cited amount of €24 million is actually the value of the subject matter of this injunction verdict as determined by court, not the actual fine (although it could become that much).
Following a request made by the organization, the Hamburg court ruled that Rapidshare is forbidden from making any of 5,000 music tracks from GEMA’s collection available on the Internet. To comply, the company needs to make sure all of those tracks are removed from its servers and also ensure that they are not uploaded again by users. How the company is expected to do the latter, especially since many users upload files in ZIP format and password-protect them, is a mystery to me.
Rapidshare is wildly popular, with an Alexa rank of 14 and millions of unique visitors per month (Compete).
Late April, Ars Technica reported that the company had begun handing over user information to record labels looking to pursue illegal file-sharers. It’s also not the first time Rapidshare finds itself in court because of GEMA’s persistent attacks: it had already lost a similar case back in January 2008.
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.”
Hear, hear.
com or de?
.de because .com is based in Switzerland.
But article links to .com, huh?
shame
No matter, there are still tons of filesharing services out there. You can’t shut them all down.
Shocks! That’s a very, very big amount!
Oh Sad for RapidShare. Well RapidShare certainly is the best way to share pirated stuffs online(for many) due to their fast servers and no advertisements.
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
shut the frack up fanboy
nobody wants to hear what a kid has to say
Put the juice on your body luicy and then lick it back.
I knw what I am saying as I have done lots of Online Piracy via RapidShare for years but have left now. You don’t have any knowledge about it so just go away from here.
If you don’t believe me then just come up to my forum @ RapidPiracy.com you will get to know who I used to be earlier.
Here is my user link:
rapidpiracy.com/index.php?showuser=2440
Why the f#*ck can a german court punish a swiss company that has no realtionships with germany?
Welcome to the internets and capitalisms.
Sort of like saying why the heck does US want Osama Bin Laden from Afghanistan, then (If Afghanistan is where he is from)?
Or where he’s at*
Seems like the judge n jury needs more education on how internet works!
How about making a new judiciary system for internet and technology?
Oh it’s not that. The courts are just deferring the responsibility for coming up with a solution to rapidshare. Whether or not it can be done is irrelevant, and by doing this, the courts will feel like they’ve done their job in upholding copyright laws, whilst allowing a legitimate company like rapidshare to remain operational.
this is gonna be the end of rapidshare … once they give access to see what people are uploading, then the court appearances will continue …
look what happened to napster
I am not sure about the $34 Million fine. There was nothing about it in the German media
Rapidshare has many users around the globe. so its not easy to filtered out all contents. CMIIW
that’s plain dumb, judge probably does not understand internet and Rapid Share must be stupid to pay the fine… Music business must thing about how to change their business plan rather then suing internet start-ups
isnt fair, they are just the hosting part, I hope rapidshare saves from this
btw can u confirm about .COM ? the first phrase links to rapidshare.com, not about .de
This is a very good step and I hope we see more! We don’t need RapidShare or any other sharing service that shares pirated data – because it’s for those who don’t want to pay for anything and think the internet is free for download.
They better close such company. Ask any Software Company how many pirated software will be shared via this service and how many companies must close because of pirated software.
For all saying that it isn’t fair for Rapidshare… When you have a store (in the real world) where you only sell pirated software and goods – do you think you get trouble with the police and need to close your store? I think so!
Except that Rapidshare isn’t a store and there’s no easy way to tell what ratio of files that it hosts or transmits are breaking copyright or other laws.
Why doesn’t Rapidshare have conduit status on how its service gets used by the public?
thats a bad comparison,
rapidshare is like a street: there are paper boys… but they aren’t checking if the boy sells legal material
Guys, get your story straight. There was no 24 million € fine. That figure is the value of the subject matter of this injunction verdict as determined by court.
The judge is an ignoramus. Most likely noy a cyber judge. I think Rapid share is awesome. It is funny how the music industry is suing everyone. They need a better model.
you mean better than the suing model?
Hi Robin,
FoolDC is correct. There is no 24 Million EUR fine!
GEMA’s press release (http://www.gema...Hash=a63fae47b3)
says (translated):
“After appeal by GEMA, the district court of Hamburg prohibited from publication of 5.000 music titles on the internet through the sharehosting provider “rapidshare.com” (by court ruling on June 12th, 2009). This is the first court ruling against a sharehoster with a total value of 24 Million EURO. ”
There is no fine – but there will be, based on the total value, if rapidshare does not filter.
Best,
Moritz
So, if the music business needs a better model, why don’t you clowns suggest one??
There are millions of songs available for $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29 on iTunes. Complete albums, videos and movies on iTunes. Is $1.29 too much to ask for a song??
How do you suggest artists and content creators get PAID?? Selling t-shirts and $165 concert tickets??
Are people supposed to spend time and money recording an album and give it away so they can hopefully get famous and then get paid gigs?
None of you geniusus has any answers you just want everything for free.
Obviously none of you create anything of value.
I think it’s a question of music business versus recording/distribution business. It benefits artists to have their work out in the hands of fans. They are more likely to sell concert tickets and other physical merchandise.
As for the middlemen who want to make money by putting music into the hands of fans? Maybe that’s just no longer a sustainable business model. Make it free but sell ad space at the point of distribution? Make it free and gather purchase behavior as a form of marketing analysis? Figure something else out, because clearly people no longer feel that they should pay just to hear music.
Back in the day when Napster was “the” only player in the music sharing game, I proposed that music and movie companies see the piracy market as an untapped market for revenue. No matter what is done piracy will never be stopped. It’s just the nature of the beast. I proposed that a “shareware” policy be taken regarding the piracy market. If you download a song or a movie and you benefit from it then there should be a means to “donate” monies. Don’t I find it disgusting to pay almost $10 USD for a movie and find out that it’s terrible. I wouldn’t mind sending in money for products that benefit me. I believe in supporting artists and creators of movies / software. Of course you’ll always have some “freeloaders”, but I think that these production houses would find the money rolling in unexpectedly. What do these production houses have to lose. Try it out for a sample period and see if it’s worth it. If it doesn’t work out, then you haven’t lost anything, but if it does work that’s untapped revenue coming in.
WAY too much. Think about it. Prior to CDs albums in the US cost about $3.79 When CDs were first produced they cost about $7 with the promise of reduced pricing once the media became common. Since then they have increased and increased for no reason at all. Technology is dirt cheap, and the artists do NOT benefit from the higher prices. It’s the marketers and lawyers who are sucking the business dry. Ok, let’s calculate. $1.29 for one song TIMES 15 songs on the average album. tick tick buzz buzz, that’s $19.35!! Almost $20 for package and piece of plastic that costs them all of $.50 to produce and market. Subtract $.50 for the online rip offs and the constant amounts that the artists are receiving. So who’s the big thief? I am 100% for supporting the people who actually produce music, the artists! Support your artists, screw the lawyers and middle men thieves! Leave Rapidshare alone. All they do is host files. Supporting this kind of illegal attack on a host only enables and furthers the thievery of these middle men.
its illegal anyway you splice it, per our copyright laws… there are plenty of legitimate the world doesn’t need rapidshare. rapidshares knows its core customers are pirates… PERIOD!!!!! they should be shut down!!!!
about time
Pirate Bay launches encrypted private network
This is way more exciting! ( if you want almost free stuff, 5 euros or something… )
Another case of courts and media execs completely clueless as to how the internet works.
The artists are the people who deserve to make the money. All the business suits should be making no more than 50K a year and shouldn’t be driving anything above a Honda.
‘Till that happens, consider yourself at war with pirates.
“There are millions of songs available for $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29 on iTunes. ”
My problems with that “model” is that
a) none of the stuff I like (heavy metal) is there
b) I don’t have (and don’t want to be forced upon) an iPod
c) I don’t want to be forced to download an additional bloody software to search and purchase my music (apart from a browser).
What do you have to say to me? I don’t want to be discriminated from having access to cheap music like others.
This is hardly “discrimination.” No one is forcing you to buy an ipod, as there are hundreds of other digital music players, not to mention many other music sites where you can purchase digital music. The only problem I see is that you don’t want to be “forced” to pay anything at all, not even cheap music.
Rapidshare may be a great service, but when your business model is based solely on hosting pirated content, which Rapidshare and all other file hosting services are, you’re going to get caught sooner or later. I highly doubt they are ignorant of what type of data they are hosting.
It’s best to look at this situation as something that is unfair all around, from the end users who demand quick efficient product, all the way to copyright holders. With the development of new technology, sooner or later artists and companies will have their work pirated so quickly they will not be able to make any money. On the other end of the spectrum are customers who want their content in new and different ways, and for whom filehosting services are an alternative.
Does anyone have an answer? Probably not anytime soon.
I disagree. In most cases there isn’t much they can do to determine exactly what is passing through their service. To expect them to decrypt and peruse every file is unreasonable and unrealistic.
I also disagree that it is unfair all around. People buy music in digital format now because the marketers make it difficult to buy it otherwise. Pushing everything onto digital sites means they no longer have to build artwork and fashion packaging for the music that is being circulated. Still they charge five times what it is actually worth and continue to raise prices. The artists see little if any of that. So it’s not really in their interest to pursue this kind of action, and that explains why the lawyers and RIAA are going after them. I will always purchase my music as close to the artists as I can. If there’s a way to cut the parasites out of the picture by going directly to the artist’s website, I’ll do that too. They have made statements that the only way to make money anymore is to tour. Interesting how the lawyers and RIAA are swimming in so much dough that they can attack people all over the world including working single moms who have no idea what the kids are doing while she’s at work. These are heartless money sucking leeches we’re talking about here. I have no sympathy for them at all. Support your artists. Screw the lawyers.
There is a different between free consumer file hosting services than an actual business service provider. With services like Rapidshare, there are too many risks involved and lack IT administrative control.
We discussed the difference between the two grades of services in our blog a while ago: http://blog.lea...le-hosting.html
First there was Napster …. then Kazaa … then Pirate Bay …. now Rapidshare what’s next …
Kindly correct spelling mistake of Rapidshare at
“Rapishare COO Bobby Chang, according to”
Rapishare is not correct!
I work for ShareFile (http://www.sharefile.com) and we follow these developments pretty closely.
Personally, unless the ISPs do something, then these types of sites will just keep popping up again and again.