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Germany's RIAA Sues Rapidshare - YouTube Next?
Hermel writes "The GEMA (Germany's RIAA) obtained a temporary injunction against 'one-click-hoster' Rapidshare.com. If their lawsuit is successful, the GEMA intends to use it as a beachhead against their next targets, including Youtube and MySpace. From the article: 'According to GEMA, the service ... has at times boasted of making some 15 million files available to its users. The operator had however failed to obtain from GEMA a license for making copyright protected files available ... Through its injunctions the District Court in Cologne had now made it clear to the company that the fact that it was the users and not the operator of the services that uploaded the content onto the sites did not, from a legal point of view, lessen the operator's liability for copyright infringements that occurred within the context of the services, the spokesman added.'"
1) Create crappy copyrighted material
2) Upload my crappy copyrighted material to every website that allows anonymous posting
3) Sue every website uploaded to
4) Profit!
I think this all comes to who is more important: the milltions of user who enjoy such services, or the few execs who stand to make _more_ money if people do not enjoy these services. One thing though, I highly doubt they will be satisfied with what ever amount they make when they have rid the world of all filesharing services. They will find new targets then.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
GEMA=Nazis... just like the RIAA...
Except that it's Germany's version of Nazis.
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the GEMA cannot be compared to the RIAA. While the RIAA is mostly an industry organisation, the GEMA is a representation of the artists. Not that it doesn't suffer the same delusions of grandeur the RIAA does, but at least the money paid to the GEMA really ends up in the pocket of the artists. And the fees the GEMA requests are pennys compared to the invoices the RIAA sends out.
Regards, Martin
Before I explain the difference, I should acknowledge that many Slashdotters have equal disdain for anybody in the music business who tries to assert their rights. For example, we normally state that we're in favor of the artists and that we think artists should have more rights, money, and respect, but when the BMI or ASCAP (US performing rights agencies run by and for artists and wholly unrelated to the RIAA) sue businesses for playing music without a royalty, Slashdotters bring out the hatred equal to that of the RIAA. So, if "RIAA" is shorthand for "anybody in the music industry who tries to interfere with the free (as in beer AND speech) distribution of music", then yeah, GEMA is like the RIAA, but it's still important to understand the difference.
Here's what GEMA is about, in English. Like BMI and ASCAP, they're a society of composers, lyricists and music publishers.
I believe (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong) that the actual German equivalent of the RIAA -- that is, the trade group representing record companies -- is the IFPA.
With all the ire at GEMA's actions, I think the message here is clear: as covered above, we all respect the musicians, and we want them to have more money, rights, and respect. But only on our terms. If they take legal actions or otherwise demand more money, rights, or respect -- in other words, if they simply get too uppity -- then they're on equal moral grounds as the RIAA et al.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Weniger als ein Zehntel der GEMA-Mitglieder erhalten mehr als 70 % der ausschüttungsfähigen Summe, während über 90% der Mitglieder nur einen Bruchteil erhalten, wie aus einem Jahresbericht hervorgeht. Nur die ordentlichen Mitglieder der GEMA bestimmen die Auszahlungsmodalitäten. c.f.
Which essentially says that a few determine which 10% of the members get 70% of the bucks.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
No, it is not. Most users get 30/Kbs upload rates. So, setting up web servers and ftp servers from the internet access is not practical. If you buy a website, it can cost about $200-$300/year for the most basic package.
Do you know long it would take to download a 700MB file from Rapidshare? There is a limitation of 100MB per file and 1 file per 90 minutes. It would take over 10 hours! With bitorrent you can get it in less than 30 minutes. It does not make sense for illegal content at all.
I used rapidshare to share music projects - since most musicians will try and e-mail everything to you. So exchanging rapidshare links was good and we didn't care if it died a few days later since we could have updated the song anyway.
To tell you truth, I thought only thing unauthorized that was posted on rapidshare was pr0n clips.
Where did you get that number? Oh yeah, you just made it up.