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Rapidshare Divulges Uploader Information
Gorgonzolanoid notes a post on TorrentFreak reporting that the German Rapidshare is divulging uploader information to rights holders. Record labels are apparently making creative use of "paragraph 101" of German copyright law, which gives them a streamlined process to ask a court to order disclosure of information such as an IP address. "In Germany, the file-hosting service Rapidshare has handed over the personal details of alleged copyright infringers to several major record labels. The information is used to pursue legal action against the Rapidshare users and at least one alleged uploader saw his house raided."
RapidShare is now rapdidly sharing uploader information.
There are far better hosts that don't require you to purchase a "premium" account. Why even bother with RapidShare?
...when you don't take adequate measures to protect yourself and rely on third parties to do the protection for you.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
So all you "IAAL's" out there, could these logs be presented in a court outside of Germany?
Was the act of uploading to Rapid Share from country X a violation of copyright laws in Germany, X, or both? Also, if no one downloaded the content you uploaded, have you still distributed?
Just curios... I could never make out the captchas so this doesn't affect me.
... Hardcore filesharers using Rabidshare!
why direct download sites operated with so little trouble, when torrent sites were always being targeted for infringement. Maybe that will start to change.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I've heard from many that rapidshare is the last place one should come to because they track the consumers. So i ask, whats new here?
I'm assuming this is for Rapidshare.de, yes? Seeing as Rapidshare.com's master company is based outside of Germany..
Rapidfail! ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Always share all your media files with your friends via sneaker net & expect to copy theirs in return. 100% safe! :)
If you must upload to sites like rapidshare, please take great care. Bittorrent is safer since it doesn't say who started the upload. I don't know if superseed more is safer or less safe, but I'd imagine safer.
Yes, there are people who upload material in infringing ways. But there are also lots of people who upload material in ways that (at least in the US, Your Kilometers/litre May Vary Elsewhere) don't infringe copyright but are still complained about by record labels and other alleged copyright holders. One way to support alternatives to infringing activities is to support groups like the EFF and Lessig's folks in defending fair use.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I have been using Rapidshare for a long time. I am canceling my account immediately. I advise anyone that uses Rapidshare to do that too.
We should show them that we do not accept such behavior.
As long as they don't tell anybody that I've been uploading kiddie porn.
Gotta appreciate the lazy cowardly policemen that chose to raid a music pirate instead of dealing with serious violent/criminal offenders.
I love (no I don't) how the police will spend hours, if not days, of their man-hours dealing with petty nothings while the most blatant criminal elements are perpetually neglected.... I suppose this comes from giving the police the option which crimes deal with. In that case of course they will avoid dangerous battles and cowardly resort to minor traffic infractions and (as made evident) music pirates.
NWA said it best.
My proposal? Double the pay and bennies for the police, half the number on the force, and then expect a LOT more out of them and focus them on worthwhile crime. Then implement a very small, separate force to deal with traffic infringement and all the other petty crap.
When I served in the military, if there was more work to be done, you don't go home. That is part of service. I fail to understand how the police go home after a shift of handing out speeding tickets when there is quite obviously a *lot* more to be done --- that is not what they have sworn to do when joining the force, nor is it what we should permit them to maintain.
I would rather have very little or no police than to have a force that operates under convenience and laziness.
We should show them that we do not accept such behavior.
Rapidshare was complying with the law in the country in which it was operating. I would have thought that this was an entirely reasonable thing to do.
Of course, because they are prepared to comply with the law means that you cannot continue to download copyright material to which you have no implied right with impunity. Now you might have to face the consequences of your actions in much the same way as you would expect to be treated if you broke any other law.
You have no inherent right to the product of someone else's work simply because you believe that all music or films should be distributed free of charge to anyone who wants them. The laws regarding copyright might well be biased too far in favour of those who own the copyright, but the correct way to counter this is to get the law changed.
Please don't think that you represent me when you use the word 'We'. I do not like the laws regarding copyright, but breaking the law is not necessarily the best way to get the law changed. It might seem like one possible solution and it may indeed be tolerated in a small number of countries but most of the civilised world has an alternative process in place for such needs.
Posting AC also indicates quite a bit about your character. If you haven't the courage to stand up for your beliefs and be seen to be doing so then you are certainly not taking part in an act of civil disobedience, but simply hiding in the shadows in fear. In which case perhaps you have already destroyed your own argument.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
Damn, what a day to not use my neighbor's wifi.
Rapidshare really should be going after the child pornographers. I run an image board website and we are constantly inundated with child porn often linking to rapidshare files. I try to report them but they just dont seem to care.
Information wants to be free, right?
How about you don't actually retain ANY information.. just provide a God damn service. Stupid nubs.
It wasn't all fun and games for the record labels EITHER...
http://rapidshare.com/files/12345678/PIRATE_IP_ADDRESSES.part1.rar | 209715 KB
You are not a Premium User and have to wait. Please notice that only Premium Users will get full download speed.
Still 66 seconds...
there are several things wrong with the whole system (in terms of music)...
:-)
- the fact that you're paying for a license to listen to the music, not the music itself is a bit of a fiddle. (correct me if i'm wrong). if i pay for music, i want to be able to do with that particular music, what i wish. if i want to play it from the rooftops for all to hear, i should be able to.
- the fact that, out of the money you pay for music, only a small percentage of that money actually goes to the artists. the rest goes to the record labels, and covers the costs of advertising, paying the production team and fueling corporate profits. the band make most of their money from live concerts, which, in my eyes, far exceeds the experience of listening to an album on my headphones. in accordance with this level of experience, live concerts cost a substantial amount more than a cd, but i really dont care. if i managed to get all my albums free of charge, i'd be able to pick the best ones to go and see live, and have more money with which to fund such a venture.
- the fact that, when a law suit is filed for copyright infringement, the amount demanded is so far in excess of the amount of music that has actually been downloaded. this can only lead me to think that its the record labels suing fans, not the bands, and that the record labels are looking to recoup their losses to copyright infringement on the few scapegoats hap-hazardly chosen from the masses. if it was a case of "okay, you've been caught, hand over the money"... "okay, here you go"... *hands over money for the 3 cd's he downloaded for a friend*... then i would be quite willing to co-operate. but that'd be honest, and more expensive, quite un-corporate. instead they sue for hundreds of thousands of *currency* to make up as much money as they can manage.
i suppose all the above is indicative of a flawed system. as a band, the last thing you want to be doing is hassling your fanbase for money that you're not getting anyway... i just question the higher level affiliations between the record companys, production companys, parent conglomorates and the policing services. i'd imagine the governments of the world are quite sympathetic to the industry that makes an extremely substantial amount of money, and has the ultmate influence on popular culture in society. you have large record companys paying for "britney spears 2.0" to keep us away from thinking about the real issues... like in the USA, and their laws about income tax, or lack of them... or in england, and their complete lack of understanding of how money is created (nobody knows the answer to a simple question - "where does money come from?").
i've probably missed stuff, but jus add to it when you feel free.
haha
no one has a complete file so , and as you dont know what the other 9 have only you get 21%to 30% is your duty, you never have the whole file
sue me then.
I break the law and download illegal music, movies and tv shows not because of anything to do with principles but because it's easy, I can, and I don't want to pay.
What matters is not whether or not copyright should be abolished or fundamentally altered because of the digital revolution: it probably should.
What matters is the streamlined procedure to obtain ip addresses, as specified in German law. What we should ask ourselves is whether or not these laws are just, constitutional and proportional. We should ask ourselves whether we want to hand out such broad authorizations, turning private entities into 'law enforcement' agencies.
Piracy, copyright and "intellectual property" were vehicles to get these laws passed, if the vehicles disappear, the law remains, as does the drive towards totalitarianism. New vehicles will emerge, new totalitarian laws will get passed.
But there are also lots of people who upload material in ways that...at least in the US...don't infringe copyright but are still complained about by record labels and other alleged copyright holders.
Legitimate distribution implies that you can produce a license from the owner of the copyright or his agent.
It doesn't matter how small and scattered are the pieces of the puzzle you've uploaded. If they can be requested, delivered and assembled on demand you are a distributor.
Talk of "Fair Use" is smoke and mirrors.
The uploader is tagged because his files are publicly exposed.
It's as simple as that.
His files are the primary P2P sources, the files with the Five-Star rating.
It's likely he stamps his own nickname over the opening credits - and its worth laying out real money to run him to ground.
Talk of "alleged" copyright holders is no less fraudulent.
You'll find the occasional enthusiast interested in forties radio, fifties television and the flicks that play on TCM.
The Okatu who needs his obscure anime fix.
But - for the uploader - the real prize is the movie not yet in first-run theatrical release.
If you can name a court case where the defendant uploader successfully challenged the plaintiff's ownership of a copyright, I should very much like to hear of it. But I don't believe the beast exists.
Shouldn't that be the people they are hurting?
The right to privacy is a basic one.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Resistance during war-time occupation is a different ball game from civil disobedience
How is it different? In the United States, the drug czar has declared a war on some drugs, and now the copyright czar is about to declare a war on sharing.
to either party. That is, they are not supposed to act as if though the claims of guilt and innocence are supposed to be weighed equally. They are supposed to presume the defendant is innocent until the prosecution proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That is, the jury is supposed to be biased towards the defense at the outset. The prosecution only gets a conviction if they produce enough evidence to overcome that rather strong built-in bias to which the defense is entitled.
How about actually creating new works and sharing them with the community
If I did, I could get sued for accidental plagiarism. It happened to George Harrison.
Richard Stallman decided contractual and copyright-related restrictions were threatening his community. So he said (may not be an exact quote ;)) "fuck all y'all, I'm writing my own OS".
To establish that copying has occurred, the copyright owner must demonstrate both 1. the alleged infringer's access to the copyrighted work and 2. the substantial similarity of the works in question. It's easy to shield yourself from access to proprietary software: don't read non-free source code. But music differs markedly from computer programs in this respect. Once you've heard a song on the radio or as background music in a grocery store, you are deemed for the rest of your life to have had "access" to that song.
This is interesting in a political and an historical context. Gandhi worked with non violent means as a choice, but not as the only choice except by circumstance. Although he was a pacifist, he recognized that the "gun control" laws that prohibited the Indian people from ownership (mostly) were designed to quell any insurgency against the British colonial powers. The Indian people had been disarmed by the British, on purpose and "by law", (privately and even for the most part they had no armed governmental workers either) and as such they had no means to use force against their "masters". Non violent resistance then became their only option, and they suffered a lot for it. And in Germany, one of the very first acts the fascists managed was the almost total disarming of the civilian populations, making it quite easy for them to implement their "solutions". There's a pattern...
People seem to forget, civilization doesn't necessarily equal freedom or peace. Civilizations can be quite organized and have a great amount of civil governmental infrastructure, but still be violent with state sponsored terrorism and oppression of all the people or selected subgroups of the people there. Civil does not equal free. A full oppressive police state can be quite "civilized". Or like they are wont to say, "pacified".
I'll also add this as a personal anecdotal. As a civil rights worker back in the day (belts..onions..), there was some success, but it was one step back for every two forward and it was scary and it sucked mostly. It wasn't until the scene changed as more and more vets came back from viet nam who were either black and returned to still oppressive society or poor whites, who had gotten drafted while their richer peers got off with basket weaving majors in college with the 2s deferments, and those dudes weren't all necessarily into being non violent, quite the opposite actually, they had just returned from where being very violent was the expected norm. Whoops....
These folks and a growing sense of direct action combined with some other factors led to the major riots in the mid to late 60s. The powers that be (here comes my opinion) finally got scared enough to actually DO something about the situation rather than just talk about it. They didn't want to, they were *forced* to make some concessions.
The 64 civil rights act didn't do much of anything until the fatcats realized they could wake up one day with one or several major cities no longer under their control, important big cities. They would have been seized and occupied by outright rebels with a cause and several legitimate and rather large beefs, or burnt to the ground, either way, lost to their control. They capitulated, although they won't admit it, that is exactly what happened and it went beyond non violent protest or threat and promise of same to get there.
And everyone knew it.
Then stuff changed, for real this time. They *really* starting enforcing the civil rights laws, in a lot more places. They changed the draft to a lottery system so no more fatcats kids getting out of it. That backfired on them though, because that in turn lead to the war finally ending (started to become obvious it would end, put it that way), because the protests then quintupled/more in size from all these new kids suddenly realizing it wasn't going to be just the blacks from the ghettoes and rural farmers kids going, but THEM too, so they joined in the protests. It went from thousands to hundreds of thousands at protests, and rather quickly. And the situation was clearly not going in wallstreet's/government puppets favor, they had to keep backing down or they were eventually going to face the "heads on pikes" stage of social readjustment.
Now they did have a goonish reactionary success that they weaseled through, the passage of the 68 gun control act. That was a huge disappointment for true second amendment rights, and was clearly a racist and reactionary bill (you had to really be there to ca
They threatened Rapidshare with Room 101.
... but thank you; your perspective on history was much appreciated, and I think the the copyright philosophy was spot-on. Maybe we will never be allowed to solve world hunger or possibly even have un-metered free energy because of this ideology and precedent, also regardless of the technological advances? M*nsanto comes to mind.
Maybe it is truly a race to provide such things before they are encumbered.
They may well have released data to the German authorities, but they're based here in Switzerland. I've worked a bit with some of the guys there (I used to live in the town where they're located). Besides which, the "AG" suffix is a Swiss business designation, roughly equivalent to (I think) GmbH in Germany. And of course, Wikipedia backs me up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapidshare
Of course, they did originate with German TLD (rapidshare.de).
Why is this relevant? Because rapidshare.com accounts don't work on rapidshare.de (at least, according to Wikipedia). Therefore, people with .com accounts may not be at risk (from this instance).
Just FYI. There's some great comments on this article about the so-called civil disobedience vs simple greed, so I'm not condoning the downloading behavior (though, frankly, I've done it myself), but I thought some people would probably like to consider this angle.
It's to a nasty javascript-tastic shocksite
Just RAR and password-protect the uploads then. And give the archives non-obvious names. You'll be safe. In theory, the passwords can be bruteforced, but they have better things to do. Like hunting down people who upload in "the clear" so to speak.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
This has actually been long known. Whoever sends a complaint against some files hosted at RapidShare receives a list of IP addresses and times of the upload *without even asking for them*.
how about people just don't routinely ignore the law?
oops, forgot that apparently if slashdot readers find the law inconvenient, then they just ignore it.
The law exists to protect copyright holders and businesses. If you want to share music with the world, go buy a guitar and write your own.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Here's a thought. Wouldn't it just be easier to actually pay for the copyrighted material? It seems like the /. crowd is spending a lot of time and energy trying to do something that is illegal. If you want the song -- buy it. If you want that book PDF -- buy it. What's wrong with actually paying for something?
When are people going to learn that if you provide identifying information to a service provider, it can and will be used against you if you do something illegal or that a private rights holder does not like. It blows my mind when I see people happily registering for torrent trackers, warez sites, and even rapid share, and then thinking that somehow the information given to the service is safe. It's a matter of time until someone goes after *downloaders* and with these sites, EVERYTHING is exposed.
-- $G
Post B) You should not break the law: obey it and meanwhile try to change it through political process
Which would not happen because corporation and lobby have many time the factor that any given group of people have, centralized resource (time/money and willingness) and they are already established. Post B is totally and utterly unrealistic.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As6758oOuYs doesn't mean much.
One thing you can do is make up your own CGI parameters that YouTube would just ignore: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As6758oOuYs&title=Cryptomnesia_Vertigo
You seem to forget whenever these corporations don't make whatever number of dollars they seem to think they're owed by us peons, they simply attribute the losses to piracy and push even more restrictions on people using technology. What good does it do to avoid RIAA music, MPAA movies, BSA software, etc when your actions only get you labeled as a pirate any way? If we're all going to show up as statistical pirates any way, why not get some booty for our troubles?
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
You can work to change the law. Most likely this is pointless.
Or you can elect someone President who will selectively enforce the laws you dislike.
Obama does not have the political capital to spend to change the Federal Drug laws regarding "medicinal marijuana", but he can direct Federal Law Enforcement not to enforce the Federal laws in California.
Something about this just doesn't seem right.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I'm really interested in knowing what kind of sense of humor you need to have to mod that parent funny.
The moderator must be cracking up reading my post right now...
you can't copy what hasn't been created.
There is no take-down notice step. If you make publicly available without permission, you are automatically liable. Even if nobody has downloaded anything yet.
The IP address isn't proof.
It is simply evidence: a relevant and admissible fact that points in a certain direction.
The courts never deal in absolutes, only in probabilities.
The deadliest mistake a geek can make in court is to spin out scenarios that when looked at closely make very little sense.
Scenarios that betray his own misbegotten ingenuity.
I really never understood why in this day in age musicians still use record companies. They now have all the tools necessary for their own distribution on their own terms, and for greater profit potential. I am not sure if most keep 100% of the rights of what they have created with their own talent, and if so then there is that as a bonus as well. Too many people making money off of others that have no talent to offer. This is the sad state of the world today.
Legitimate distribution can either mean that you have a license from the owner, or that you don't need one. There's a lot of support for Fair Use in US copyright law, and there have been a lot of cases where copyright owners, mainly record labels, have done DMCA takedown requests to ISPs for material that is legitimate fair use, especially in the case of parodies and sampled material. Sometimes the uploader can reply to the ISP and get the material put back up, sometimes not.
I'm not talking about your people uploading ripped-off-not-yet-in-theatrical-release movies strawman; those are pretty clear cases, and they aren't the kind of thing where the uploader even tries to get to court, which is also mostly a strawman. For the most part, fair use cases don't get to court either, because usually the fair-use user doesn't have a commercial interest in fighting it past a DMCA-takedown-response to the ISP, and record labels are usually satisfied with getting the takedown (legitimate or not), unless they think they can get a lot of money by suing the defendant. There are exceptions where fair use cases go to court, but usually everybody has an incentive to settle first instead.
Actual cases about disputes over ownership are another strawman, and they're less likely to be alleged-owner-sues-uploader cases; there's a lot of sloppiness in record label deals, even aside from the generally established practice of labels ripping off artists in return for occasionally rewarding some of them well, and a lot of older material where copyright renewal wasn't handled correctly so copyright has been lost. (By the way, the EFF checked into the Happy Birthday people, and if I understand correctly, not only was the copyright not renewed properly at some point, the "owners" will cave in and license it for next to nothing to preserve their undefeated record, so it's always cheaper to pay them to go away than to fight them.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks