Atari Loses Copyright Suit Against RapidShare

dotarray writes "Online copyright lawsuits aren't all about music. Video game publisher Atari Europe recently became concerned that copies of its game Alone in the Dark were floating around one-click file-hosting service RapidShare, so it took the hosting company to court. While they won the initial case, the decision was overturned on appeal, finding that RapidShare is doing nothing wrong."

Comments

torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

They did nothing wrong hosting a full game, while other site hosting torrents are?

Re:torrent

[mariushm]

And you suppose they should just ban everything with the text "AloneInTheDark" in the name, as if nobody can upload some some screenshots or some machinima movie or some game mod or some fan related stuff for Alone In The Dark... Just look up Youtube to see how many videos are for "Alone in the dark", only 5040 videos.

The reality is the name of the file has nothing to do with the content... and if you enforce something like this, soon you'll find files called a.rar, a.r01 and so on, and copyright owners won't even find the pirated stuff because people posting pirated content will just type the description, do a print screen and post the picture with the details instead of text. And how is that going to help anyone?

Re:torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Rapidshare is against tough odds.

1) noone can be sure that AloneInTheDark is a game owned by Atari. Might as well be an amateur p0rn movie, a school comedy about ghosts etc. Is RapidShare and other file hosts expected to sit and watch every content to confirm ?

2) They could implement hashes, which would only force uploaders to change a counter in a text file, making the hash completely different. It would delay pirates at max 10 seconds, doing it by script.

Re:torrent

[ledow]

So not only must Rapidshare know the name of every film, book and video game in existence (and in copyright) but they also have to filter anything that sounds even vaguely like them, has characters added, uses "l33t" spelling, etc. so that they don't accidentally host them? And not only that, but they have to go by the filename, so if I upload 2.7 millions movie clips all called "Aliens", they have to take every single one of them off despite not a single one of them actually having any copyrighted material in them?

Yes, it's obvious that it's easy to circumvent. It's also immediately obvious that, even if a court orders it, they can't *stop* that no matter how many people they hire, checks they make, or copyright holders they work with. Thus it's a pointless exercise to try to pretend they can. All they NEED to do is react to reports of copyright infringement, the same as anyone else. If you don't react, you are basically hindering copyright holders from stamping out infringement. If you DO react, you're not getting in their way even if you do end up inadvertantly hosting some of their content - but you can at least say "it wasn't us, this guy gave us that file" and so trace it back to an individual that CAN be prosecuted (and refusing to identify users etc. will get you into the same trouble with courts as not taking off the files when asked to by a validated copyright holder).

Additionally, I'm a copyright holder. I have written software, written books, drawn images, filmed videos and all manner of things. Thus if I ask, they have to take stuff down if I believe it's mine. That means they have to have some kinds of primitive checks to ensure I *am* a valid copyright owner and have NOT given my permission (there are some genuine software authors that willingly use RapidShare to save their bandwidth, for example), even for the most obscure and nonsensical things that get uploaded to their service. So even investigating every copyright infringement *report* is a huge burden, let alone every *potential* copyright infringement (which basically means performing those checks for EVERY file).

RapidShare might be a hive of illegal content, but when reported it gets removed. So is eBay a hive of illegal content, but when you report it, it gets removed - whether that's because you're selling Nazi memorabilia in France, a baby, or just unlicensed software. It's RIDICULOUS to expect a host to pre-screen absolutely everything they put onto a download website or even a busy auction site. (Almost) Every court in the world recognises that and only expects them to co-operate fully when things ARE reported.

Re:torrent

[mwvdlee]

RapidShare is not just sharing files, it's making money off content that is mostly illegal. This is not a service that wants to "share" anything, in fact they try to push you into paying by making the "sharing" part next to impossible for free. Remove all illegal content from RapidShare, and they'll be out of business very quickly.
To me, that makes RapidShare, and similar services catering primarily to illegal files, immoral.

I think you'll find a pretty large amount of Slashdotters believe that filesharing copyrighted content for profit IS immoral.

Re:torrent

[TFAFalcon]

But rapidshare isn't the one sharing the material. They don't even enable searching for files. They just provide storage and downloads of files someone else uploads and then tells people about.

Would you consider google evil for enabling the sharing of files through email? Or ISPs evil for providing their customers upstream bandwidth?

Re:torrent

[andydread]

I think you'll find a pretty large amount of Slashdotters believe that lying to congress about your lost profits, running college extortion schemes, presenting false information about how piracy is killing jobs, corrupting govenrment officials, corrupting DJs with payola, ripping off artists, paying a RIAA/MPAA/CRIAA/IFPI tax on blank media and many more of the practices of the RIAA/MPAA/BSA/CRIAA/IFPI immoral

Re:Well well well

[allometry]

A file sharing service being held accountable for a file a user posted?

While they are technically hosting the file, they did not originate the content. Kinda like saying a person who picked up a second-hand pair of boots off a dead guy is an accessory to murder.

This was the right call.

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[Rysc]

No.

Rapidshare hosts (unknowingly) copyrighted content, not guilty.

PirateBay does not host any copyrighted content, guilty.

Re:Well well well

[CRCulver]

Is Rapidshare used for anything besides sharing films, music and ebooks?

Re:Well well well

[dbune]

Is Rapidshare used for anything besides sharing films, music and ebooks?

Yes it is! games,pictures,porn,cracked softwares .. ..almost everything

Re:Well well well

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a better analogy is a person puts drugs in an airport locker and holding the airport criminally responsible for possession of drugs.

One click?

[halcyon1234]

one-click file-hosting service RapidShare

One click? Sure, if you mean one click to follow the posted link, then three more clicks to navigate towards the download, a few more to skip adds, then at least five more to answer questions like "Do you want the premium service? [NO], I don't want to wait, sign me up. [YES] I want it..... [extremely tiny font] just download my fucking file already [/extremely tiny font]