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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."
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.
I'm assuming this is for Rapidshare.de, yes? Seeing as Rapidshare.com's master company is based outside of Germany..
Yes, you distributed it to RapidShare. You "sent" it to them without permission of the rightsholder.
In most places I know it's only the making available, the uploading, that's a legal problem.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Gotta appreciate the lazy cowardly policemen that chose to raid a music pirate instead of dealing with serious violent/criminal offenders.
I don't approve of that kind of crap either, but you do realise that that is a false dichotomy, right?
Gotta appreciate the lazy cowardly policemen that chose to raid a music pirate instead of dealing with serious violent/criminal offenders.
Oh come on--the police are just doing what they're told. There's some guy/gal way up the chain that made the decision to raid the pirate^H^H^H^H^H^Hcopyright infringer's premises.
I agree that it's a stupid use of resources, but don't put that on the folks that are at the bottom of the chain.
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 don't know about you, but I got into the military by signing a lengthy contract that essentially obligated me to do whatever the service deemed necessary, whether it was 12 hours of watch every day, marathon sessions to close out monthly maintenance jobs before the clock ran out, or death in combat.
I suspect the police don't sign on the dotted line for anywhere near that level of obligation. Keeping them there "until all the jobs are done" probably requires a declared state of emergency or something similar.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
There is some relatively new order in place that the prosecution doesn't get active for minor incidents anymore. ( There were just too many cases over the last years that it meant too much work for the courts, like a few hundred thousand open cases ... )
Well, downloading a few songs alone might look like a minor issue to the prosection, so they refuse to get active there. But p2p traffic also usually means that you are also uploading. And uploading means that you are spreading that copyrighted material. So if the music labels prove that you were uploading, it's probably much easier to argue, that the damage wasn't minor but big enough for the prosecution to get active and force the provider to give them their customer data, even if it's only about a few songs.
That's the whole reason, I think.
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.
This is the geek's all-purpose defense to a charge of white collar crime.
But the police can multi-task.
But p2p traffic also usually means that you are also uploading.
I'm not sure if you're referencing Rapidshare as as P2P, but it's pretty much the polar opposite.
People generally only download when using rapidshare, as 'leeching' has significantly less negative affects on the community than it does in a bit-torrent community.
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.
How is it that books are put in libraries yet somehow music and movie makers seem to think that their product (which is spat out in weeks or a few months) is somehow better than that of authors that spend years creating the books that many of the movies are based on. I will personally not purchase any of their products until they stop these tactics. They act like the SS.
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!
Your typical author doesn't spent $180 million to write a blockbuster book.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
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