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

[HungryHobo]

they follow the DMCA, they remove things when people report stuff to them.

Re:torrent

[mwvdlee]

Then they allow the exact same file to be uploaded again with a slightly different filename.

Gone is AloneInTheDark_87A81B2717B.zip, say hello to AloneInTheDark_87A81B2717C.zip

And they don't provide any means for copyright holders to prevent this.

Rapidshare may be legally right, morally they are very wrong.

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

[SuricouRaven]

There's also a TV series and a series of books called Alone In The Dark.

Re:torrent

[laughingcoyote]

The DMCA put the "policing" responsibility on the copyright holders, who are, after all, the ultimate beneficiaries of the copyright anyway. So no, they shouldn't be forcing unrelated third parties to do it for them.

Re:torrent

[X.25]

Then they allow the exact same file to be uploaded again with a slightly different filename.

Gone is AloneInTheDark_87A81B2717B.zip, say hello to AloneInTheDark_87A81B2717C.zip

And they don't provide any means for copyright holders to prevent this.

Rapidshare may be legally right, morally they are very wrong.

I can only laugh at your moral(e) values.

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

[mwvdlee]

So... how exactly does YouTube handle copyrights in video's? They don't do a perfect job, but they manage.

Re:torrent

[commodore64_love]

>>>morally they are very wrong.

Alone in the Dark is over 14 years old. (If I recall correctly.) It should be in the public domain anyway. "Morality" tells me that no company should have a permanent monopoly on art. Imagine if the Venus de Milo or Mona Lisa were still copyrighted, such that nobody could reproduce them, not even in textbooks. We cannot lock-up our culture like that.

Also RapidShare isn't really hosting the file. They are merely a man-in-the-middle providing addresses between Me and Whoever has the file. Much like what the phonebook does. Do you sue the phonebook because they allowed me to locate and call a stranger to say, "Can you copy that game for me?" Nope.

So I don' think RapidShare is wrong but I DO think it's a crime against humanity to look-up art for more than 14 years (or more than 100 years under current law).

Re:torrent

[PhrstBrn]

Put a password on it, and change the password each time you upload. The checksum will change, guaranteed.

Re:torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

majority rule. duh.

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

[HungryHobo]

once someone tells them they're hosting copyrighted content they take it down.
Should they be rooting through my files, reading my documents and watching my home videos just to try to decide if it's copyrighted content (which they still won't know) before someone reports it?
never mind encrypted files.

Re:torrent

[icebraining]

RapidShare is knowingly hosting illegal downloads

No, they're not. They have no idea if a specific file is legal or not until the owner tells them, and then they remove it.

What exactly is immoral? Having a file hosting service at all?

Re:torrent

[kj_kabaje]

I have a question about how this works, money laundering is described thusly: "By its nature, money laundering (as in the case of receiving stolen goods) is a form of acting as an accessory after the fact, - a material contribution to, or assistance in, taking benefits from assets of illegal origin." It's my understanding that a bank is liable when they gain or take benefit from stolen goods. If Rapidshare is charging for the distribution of stolen goods, are they then gaining from assets of illegal origin?

Re:torrent

[Noone Thirty]

noone can be sure that AloneInTheDark is a game owned by Atari.

True enough, but it doesn't matter. I'd never work for those bastards.

Re:torrent

[mcgrew]

Rapidshare may be legally right, morally they are very wrong.

Like Obiwan said to Luke, that depends on your point of view.

Some people think homosexuality is immoral, some think that drinking is immoral, and hell, my great aunt told my grandmother that she was going to hell because she wore pants. Morality depends on your viewpoint.

There are people who think there should be no such thing as copyright, there are people who have bought a license to the game but scratched the CD, there are people who don't want to shell out good money until they've tried the game; I've seen posts from all these viewpoints at slashdot and so have you.

Then you have to remember that there has never been proof that piracy is harmful to anyone, and there is proof that with books at least, piracy is actually beneficial.

What's going to happen when we can print anything physical we want?

Besides, what do morals have to do with business? To someone who worships money, nothing that brings a profit is immoral.

Re:torrent

[RJHelms]

Yeah, I'm sure their compliance with the DCMA means a lot in a lawsuit heard in the Higher Regional Court of Dusseldorf.

Re:torrent

[bjourne]

That argument, "it is to hard!" is so damn silly. Rapidshare have at their disposal this new thing called computers and technology. No, they can't manually check every file that is uploaded, but they can develop heuristic methods to flag the content that is most likely warez and then manually remove that.

For example, if a file gets more than 100 downloads per hour, it is most likely some copyrighted game or movie. If most of the referers who downloads the file comes from www.warezforum.com, then the file is also very likely warez. Is there file part of a 30 parts big rar archive? Probably warez too because no one else but warez groups share files like that.

These dirt-simple heuristic methods that I thought up in about five minutes could be used by rapidshare to eliminate 90% or more of all copyrighted content shared on their site with few false positives and very little manual work needed. It is not rocket science, it is a few days work at most for a competent developer to implement this system. The only reason rapidshare is not doing it, is because they profit from the "sharing" of it on their site.

Re:torrent

[Hatta]

Who's more immoral, the guy who uses government power to get himself paid in perpetuity for a days work, or the guy who helps others get around that?

Re:torrent

[orange47]

copyright owners will find it same way like everyone else looking for it.

Re:torrent

[Kjella]

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.

They host big files. Getting one ad impression in before people eat 100 MB of bandwidth doesn't cover the costs, everybody understands that. Well, everybody except you. That's a truth no matter whether the files they're sharing are legal or not, even YouTube streaming 100 MB of video has a much, much higher ads/profile value for advertizers. And even they struggled to manage costs early on.

Rapidshare doesn't target illegal files. They've steered very clear of any behavior on their part to encourage piracy. But they don't need to, because it's what people want anyway. It's like if you made knives and everyone wanted to stab people. You'd try making kitchen knives and tool knives and hunting knives, but they all turn to stabbing knives because it's what people want. If people thought like you, we'd never have tape recorders or VCRs or CD burners or anything like it.

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:torrent

[Threni]

> For example, if a file gets more than 100 downloads per hour, it is most likely some copyrighted game or movie.

Citation needed.

> These dirt-simple heuristic methods that I thought up in about five minutes

Perhaps if you spent 10 minutes you'd come up with one which wasn't shit?

Re:torrent

[delinear]

Only in the same way as Ford are guilty of bank robbery when they sell a car that's used as a getaway vehicle. Companies providing goods or services which can be abused (as most can) can only be expected to comply with the law insofar as they are aware of the wrongdoing - holding them to account for illegal activities done without their knowledge when they have shown nothing but willing in complying in the past where things have been brought to their attention is a bit much. You'd never be able to sell cars with that kind of ruling, never mind hosting legitimate files.

Re:torrent

[gl4ss]

well, they read the geoshitties memo and decided that it wasn't a good policy to make popular content automatically disappear.

it's just not good business.

also your part has a 'manually remove that'. of course, you might understand that a lot of stuff put on rapidshare is in encrypted zips and the like.

you'd like to put your imagination against all the worlds 15 year olds? your heuristic methods would come up with a lot of gray area positives too. unless you just go with the popular=illegal because otherwise it would be hosted elsewhere.

Re:torrent

[djnforce9]

All the methods you just came up with in five minutes are flawed, error-prone, and make way too many assumptions. 100 Downloads per hour? What makes you think every single illegal archive is retrieved that frequently and what if a software developer used RapidShare to save bandwidth BECAUSE their files were obtained that often? What if the uploader had permission to host the copyrighted content? You don't know that.

Also, the idea of checking the referrer address would never work either. For starters, it's not going to stop people from actually "uploading" illegal content because there is no referrer until somebody clicks the link from another site. Also, virtually any link imaginable can be posted in any site/forum so just because someone came from a site with the word "warez" in it (which not all warez sites even have in their URL), it doesn't mean the file they are downloading is automatically illegal in every single case (although it's probably likely to be such). Once again, you make way too many assumptions.

Lastly, Rapidshare has absolutely NO legal obligation to inspect every single file (as the courts just ruled). They are doing what is required by law so there is no need to cripple their service and waste excessive resources to fix the copyright woes of some other company they couldn't care less about. If they did, everyone would just dump them and move onto other file hosting services to which there are many. The last thing they'd want to do is ruin their entire business fighting an impossible battle. I know I would be frustrated if I tried to upload a "legal" file only to have it taken down immediately due to overly aggressive heuristics.

Re:torrent

[delinear]

Those dirt simple heuristic methods took you five minutes to think of because they'd take five seconds for the warez community to skew into uselessness. Is a file getting more than 100 downloads an hour? What if they just upload 100 versions of the file and iterate through the link URLs they display on their sites - heuristic skewed. Most of the referers come from warez forums? Host a link on the warez site to a legitimate site and put the download link there, or have your community spend a little time clicking legitimate download files to bury the warez in noise, or simply configure your server to not send the referer in the header - heuristic skewed. Big rar archive, same thing, upload a bunch of legitimate files in big rar archives, or put all the files into one single encrypted download, or upload the 30 parts with randomly generated names so there's no easy way to identify that they're part of the same archive and just give out instructions (or a patch application the users can run) to piece them back together - heuristic skewed.

Rapidshare are fighting precisely because they don't want to be in the position of playing whack-a-mole with the thousands of warez sites out there. It would be basically pouring money down a bottomless pit. All the cash that the music and movie and games industries have poured into this already going on over a decade now, with ridiculously expensive solutions like DRM hasn't put an end to file sharing, what makes you think Rapidshare can manage it. More to the point, what makes you think that even if they did such a thing out of the goodness of their own hearts, rather than being forced to in court, that a competitor who didn't care wouldn't just spring up and take their place?

Re:torrent

[Moryath]

Obligatory Jack "Technophobe" Valenti quote about boston strangler and VCR here, perhaps?

Or would the old "buggy whip manufacturers vs modern automobile" bit be more appropriate?

Plenty of companies still make money selling games. Plenty of people still make money creating them. And then there are companies that seem to think coasting on old successes and re-releasing the same old tired game for umpteen platforms is their "model."

For that matter, plenty of bands manage to make money playing music - the Dave Matthews Band, like them or hate them, make money because they focus primarily on touring and working for a living. Of course, they became known in the days before radio consolidation made it so that the only thing heard on the radio is the top-40 paid-for Payola scam crap we see today (I'm in the 3rd largest radio market in the country and we have FIVE TOTAL FORMATS, six if you count right-wing bile-spewing talk radio; the other five are "classic rock top 40, drugs and sex woohoo", "rap top 40, let's shoot cops", "hip-hop top 40, let's pimp hos", "country top 40, play it backwards and your truck starts working and your wife and dog come back to you", and "How many times did that racist asshat just say gringo? what the fuck is this that sounds like a combination of a mariachi band, yoko ono, and a cat having its intestines pulled out through its mouth?").

Re:torrent

[commodore64_love]

>>>Alone in the Dark is over 14 years old.
>>>(If I recall correctly.)

Okay I double-checked. AitD was first published in 1992, so it really should be in public domain by now, per the original Copyright Act of 1790. Ditto parts 2,3 and the spinoff Jack in the Dark.

Like I said in my previous post I consider it immoral for megacorps to lock-up our culture indefinitely & make it non-copyable. Imagine if nobody ever saw the Mona Lisa because some corporation still held the copyright and refused to let it be published.

Re:torrent

[clone53421]

No, they should calculate a checksum for the infringing file

They DO.

This would still not prevent people from uploading the file again if they really want to, but they would have to modify it in some way (for example package it into a new zip file) which is a lot more work than just uploading it unchanged.

Yes, that is correct, except the part about it being “a lot more work”.

Re:torrent

[ledow]

1 kid can probably do several hundred files a day if you pushed them (you say yourself, only 150 unique users). We're talking several MILLION a day. That means 1000 kids, probably more than the entire RapidShare workforce, just to do a simple screen, not even a legally-binding one. Automated, on 24-hour shifts, with human-delays in between every upload.

A publisher is putting money to put that content into presses and sell it on. RapidShare doesn't. It also has a run of several million in their entire life from a SINGLE master. So they have to check ONE book - not a million. It's not that it's impossible - it's just ridiculous to expect it. A paper is responsible for every word it prints because it only take 10 minutes to read a paper and then maybe an few dozens hours or two to check and ensure it's accuracy - with a newspaper's workforce, that's nothing. A filehost, however, or a web host, or a search engine, or a popular online auction site, has several MILLION things to check each day, each taking several hours (or even days) to verify. That's completely outside the bounds of credulity to suggest it's possible. Yes, they could JUST have one or two hundred files / pages / auctions each day visible but then Google, YouTube, RapidShare, eBay, Amazon (gotta check those reviews for copyright infringement!), and a million other websites would be dead overnight.

It's ENIRELY unreasonable to expect a large website to do anywhere near that - especially when only other people can KNOW if a file is infringing - millions of files would slip past the door every day even with the best checks because copyright licensing isn't as simple as "you can do it" or "not" (e.g. Open Source licensing, public domain, expired copyright, multiple rightsholders and licencees etc.). That means that every upload you have to determine the original author before you can get any further and that means comparing against every known copyright text in the world.

Yet a book publisher only has to check their book once. You only had to check a couple of dozen files a day for nothing more than OBVIOUSLY infringing stuff (and I bet that an awful lot of copyrighted stuff passed you by with your own permission - did you seriously, and to a legal standard, check the origins and licensing of EVERY text that you posted, every photo that you uploaded, every shareware ZIP file, everything contained inside every shareware ZIP file - and then check that the originator had a valid license from said copyright holder? With valid jurisdications and licensing rights in all countries involved (i.e. theirs and yours and those of your consumers) Yes? I call bullshit, then, before you even try to back that up). A cursive glance can tell you if or not a file is *likely* to be infringing but nobody can ever really say for sure without at least going to court. And a million cursive glances means multiplying the number of staff employed by about 10 and training them to a defined standard to sit in a box and click Yes or No all day.

It's bollocks. Which is why the court recognised such. And why Google, eBay, Amazon and a million and one other places can ONLY act on reported material. The volume is just too huge and does NOT compare to some publisher, say, printing recipes that were downloaded from the net without permission. One requires a single check inside months or years of other work, the other requires months or years of checking every second that you're working.

Re:torrent

[ledow]

The second you filter, you become responsible for what passing through the filter. Ask ISP's in restrictive countries and almost any modern legal system. If you claim to have a "safe web filter" and then someone gets a dodgy site from it, you are deemed partly responsible because "why didn't your filter catch it"? I work in schools, so I know this problem well. This is why ISP's don't WANT to filter stuff, or people don't WANT to run cybercafes in restrictive countries, or why wikipedia DOESN'T moderate every edit you do. As soon as you say "we're filtering", *EVERYONE* with a stake wants to be on your filter, and have it be perfectly accurately implemented for them alone. You filter MGM's films - okay, I'm an independent film producer, filter me too. Why not? Is piracy against me "allowed" just because I'm not part of the big studios? And by extension ten years later every website publishes nothing because nothing passes their 7 million filters in under an hour, and what does is deliberately chosen by malicious people to step on the toes of the one company that *doesn't* have a filter with you yet.

Re:torrent

[Mister Whirly]

Yes becasue if it were really that simple, don't you think they would be doing it already? They aren't idiots, if it took you 2 minutes to come up with that (and it would take pirates 2 seconds to circumvent any of your ideas) they have thought of it too and decided it wasn't feasible. The argument "you can stop this without an inordinate amount of work" is so damn silly. That would be akin to asking Google to please remove every single porn link they currently serve up. The 2 reasons neither will happen is becasue it is technically almost impossible, and people want to be able to download that content. If they aren't doing it on Rapidshare, they will be doing it somewhere else. Notice how after they shut fown Napster, somehow the P2P file sharing managed to continue?

Re:torrent

[misexistentialist]

I'm pretty sure that an even larger amount of Slashdotters do not think making money from running servers is "immoral". If you're sense of morality is that offended you really should get off the internet and retreat to a solitary monastic existence, because ours is not a moral world.

Re:torrent

[MacGyver2210]

Sure, but it's only the for-profit part I object to. I believe software should be free, no matter what it cost to develop, but I don't find it ok that someone would charge for someone ELSE'S software.

Re:torrent

[1u3hr]

Gone is AloneInTheDark_87A81B2717B.zip, say hello to AloneInTheDark_87A81B2717C.zip And they don't provide any means for copyright holders to prevent this. Rapidshare may be legally right, morally they are very wrong.

So you'd like Atari to be able to veto any filename that contained those words? Then Microsoft would veto anything that contained, say "Windows", Word", "Bob".....

I've never heard of Atari's "Alone in the dark", what if I used that as the title of a video I made? It'd be deleted;. I'd be sued, or at least hassled and have to deal with some asshole lawyer threatening me?

Anyway, what you'd get is just uploaders using random filenames and encrypted files -- in fact, many do that now. Meanwhile, people trying to transfer their own files would find them blocked or deleted if the name happened to be too similar to any one of millions of copyrighted works. Any system you can imagine that allows files to be transferred can be used to violate copyright. Unless you're going to mandate everyone send unencrypted files and allow them to be inspected by interested parties there is no way to prevent it. I could encode a video game as text and post it on Slashdot in 500 posts spread over a week.

Re:torrent

[silanea]

[...] they would have to modify it in some way (for example package it into a new zip file) which is a lot more work than just uploading it unchanged.

Yeah, which is so much more work that, um, every half-way sane upload application automates this process. Rapidshare and other hosters already do compare hashes. You are not the first bright fellow to realise that filtering file names is retarded.

Re:torrent

[Desler]

The same thing that makes it "immoral" to use GPL code in a for-profit proprietary application. Or at least that's what is being pushed by the open source people.

Re:torrent

[bjourne]

The second you filter, you become responsible for what passing through the filter. Ask ISP's in restrictive countries and almost any modern legal system.

Utter rubbish. That is not how the law works at all. Google has a safe-search feature, that doesn't mean someone can sue them for millions when something slips through that filter. Every ISP, torrent and hosting site filters out child porn and they are very good at it. TPB which prides themselves in hosting pirated content despite takedown letters, takes down child porn torrens within minutes of their uploading.

Re:torrent

[j00r0m4nc3r]

RapidShare is not just sharing files, it's making money off content that is mostly illegal

ISP are not just transmitting data, they are making money off data that is illegal.
PC makers are not just running code, they are making money off code that is illegal.
XXX is not just doing YYY, they are making money off ZZZ that is illegal.
Maybe the electric company, the water company, the food industry, etc.. are all complicit because they enable people to do illegal things.

Re:torrent

[bjourne]

Yes becasue if it were really that simple, don't you think they would be doing it already?

No they wouldn't because they are making money on people sharing pirated material! People are supposed to want to download files from them, get pissed that "all their download slots are busy" and pay for premium accounts.

Re:torrent

[Kjella]

They're not unrelated as in "they had nothing to do with it". YouTube undoubtedly, undeniably had ad income from pirated clips, the only question is how geared it is towards piracy. I mean, you can argue the hardware store profited from the sale of a crowbar too. The Betamax case was fairly clear for a piece of hardware they had no knowledge of how people used, namely at "substantial non-infringing uses".

But what about a service? Much tougher, I mean YouTube in theory knows every clip they serve. And sometimes you don't know, but you can put up the thinnest vail possible like a no questions asked pawn shop. The question is when do you pass from "unrelated third party" to "willful blindness". Is the package you're delivering any less drugs just because you didn't ask what's in it? Are the bits your ISP is delivering any less a pirated CD just because they didn't ask what's in it? Is it any less of a bribe if you leave the envelope on the table and leave the room, no questions asked when it goes missing?

It was a compromise and it was a pretty damn good one for the ISPs and hosters. As long as they comply with DMCA notices, they got total immunity against any liability from actions their users took. It was an agreement that established that they could be totally blind to what they were making money on as long as they responded promptly to questionable content. Almost no other business is allowed to be that oblivious to what they're used for.

Re:torrent

[GroovinWithMrBloe]

Easy to stop

- Don't allow zip files with passwords (or any other compression format)
- Inspect individual files in compressed archives for checksum matches (i.e. lolcat.jpg not matched, but game.exe is, so is README.txt, etc...) and if enough of the individual files match known checksums, flag it for human inspection.
- Check all files to identify what filetype they are - jpg/zip/gz/tar/etc... if the file type is not known, disallow it. Yes I'm sure someone will invent a zip file format with a JPG header.

- Perhaps for 'identity verified' customers (users who you have confirmed their phone/address somehow, e.g. TXT postal letter activation code) you lift the restrictions on no encrypted files, and also allow files of unknown type.

- Video and Audio are harder to detect than other lossless filetypes, as the user can modify it easily to change its checksum without destroying the content. There are some algorithms that fingerprints aren't affected by such changes but they're typically a lot more specific to the given filetype and I imagine quite intensive to run compared to a typical SHA/MD5 checksum.

Re:torrent

[Coren22]

I would even add the response that torrent sites don't host the full game, just a link to the person who is hosting the whole game.

Unfortunately, the GP posted anon, so why bother to respond directly to him :)

Re:torrent

[brkello]

If your whole business model collapses when you remove all the illegal material, then you are probably being immoral. They could easily implement a check on what is uploaded that would block files that already have been flagged.
 
If you removed all the illegal files from all of the Internet, google would still be viable and so would ISPs...so I don't think you are really countering his point.

Re:torrent

[Shikaku]

Easy to counter:

Zip up a rar/zip/7z.

Zip up a multipart file.

Zip up an encrypted file.

Zip up a truecrypt volume.

Etc.

Re:torrent

[mlts]

Doesn't even need a password. Just include a variable length file of random contents in the archive.

The most secure bet is just to password protect the archive with WinRAR, have the password available in the notes (this can be easily changed around so an automatic scanner can't pick up the password, similar to how /. obfuscates E-mail addresses), and call it done.

Re:torrent

[PhrstBrn]

So... you're saying store rar files with a jpeg header will break your check methods (which is done all the time). So if all they do is change the image every time, the checksum changes on the file.

You could store rars in a rar, and password the rars inside the main rar. The only way they can check for that is to decompress the rar, and they can't do that if the rar is split over several pieces, and then they have to figure out what pieces on that server make up the rar. While technically possible, not practically possible.

They could add small fingerprints to the audio and video tracks that change the checksum. You wouldn't notice.

So the only solution left would be to ban uploading zip/rar/tar/avi/mpg/mp3/etc, images (image with a rar archive on it) and exe (since it could be a self-extracting archive), nobody will use your service. You'd have to effectively ban uploading of files.

It's an uphill battle the media companies can't win.

Re:torrent

[HungryHobo]

lovely idea.
lets force every web host to only allow content in formats they themselves have the ability to read?

encrypted file? Lets assume guilty until proven innocent! wipe it!
large binary file we don't recognise? Lets assume guilty until proven innocent! wipe it!
Something in a language we don't know? Lets assume guilty until proven innocent! wipe it!
Something in a format we can't read? Lets assume guilty until proven innocent! wipe it!

and we can completely and utterly forget any form of privacy, webmail providers should be checking all attachments as well to make sure nobody is emailing warez to each other and all text to make sure people aren't sharing ebooks.

Re:torrent

[slaingod]

Or maybe they have thought about doing that and realized that it isn't easy to implement, since many of the files are already broken up into various RAR files and in many cases password encrypted. All 'file detection' would do is move people just a little further down the 'hiding your files' curve for the uploaders. JDownloader or whatever would undoubtedly handle the complexity for the downloaders seamlessly.

Re:torrent

[ZXDunny]

It's certainly not free entertainment - I pay for my broadband connection!

Re:torrent

[Mister Whirly]

In my experience when you can get the same exact thing and the choices are: 1) Free or 2) Pay - very few people pick option #2. Especially with addons like Skip Screen that fully automate the waiting and then clicking when the timer counts down part of the download. I doubt Rapidshare is the huge cash cow you imagine it to be. 1 ad per 100MB download is not a huge revenue stream, and I would guess they have some serious hardware costs.

Re:torrent

[suutar]

How would you implement such a check? File checksum? Easily bypassed. (Though better than nothing for about a day.) Filename? Easily bypassed and false positives. File contents? Hiring folks to actually look inside each file doesn't qualify as "easy checking" (nor does hiring people to look at the title of each file). What am I missing?

Re:torrent

[Coren22]

"rap top 40, let's shoot cops", "hip-hop top 40, let's pimp hos"

Is there really a difference between these two? I suppose hip-hop is bad singing that kinda matches the music and rap is speaking to a beat in a way that rhymes?

Re:torrent

[colesw]

Actually no, RapidShare does host the files you upload to them. They then provide a link you can give to others, and you download directly from their servers.

Re:torrent

[Coren22]

arrogant childish pricks who think the world owes them free entertainment.
They can go fuck themselevs like the ignorant dumbass scum they are

I would agree with these descriptions as descriptions of you with a comment like that, but most slashdotters? hardly...

Re:torrent

[adolf]

any service he likes will be ok because he likes it and uses it for other things.

any service he doesn't like will be not ok because he doesn't like it and doesn't use it for anything himself hence (at least from his point of view)nobody is using it legitimately or the people who do use it legitimately don't count for one concocted reason or another.

As Czar of the Intarwebs, on this day I declare that the above conceptual logical fallacy described in quotation above shall henceforth be known as a HungryHobo, and shall forever be referenced as such, in perpetuity.

Thank you, HungryHobo, for your contribution. May you be blessed.

Re:torrent

[sjames]

Exactly. And since an archive can easily contain any sort of salt, hash values can't help either. Even individual and personal vetting by a human being won't work. Someone will just XOR the material with something else and publish the key separately.

Re:torrent

[kenshin33]

or use a pdf http://slashdot.org/story/11/01/02/0231242/Detailing-the-Security-Risks-In-PDF-Standard

Re:torrent

[517714]

Who's more immoral, the guy who uses government power to get himself paid in perpetuity for a days work, or the guy who helps others get around that?

I don't know, which one rapes babies? The question is not about who, but about which act is less moral. The most important character in the discussion has been conveniently omitted: the downloader, who has enough money to buy a computer and pay for Internet access, but greedily takes the products of other's labor without paying - that would be the more immoral act. Neither of the other characters has necessarily done anything immoral.

Re:torrent

[Travelsonic]

Legality and morality, in general, do not always correlate.
Such flags may seem to help, but who knows - given the possibility for false positives and how circumvention can be done depending on how it is checked.

Re:torrent

[Travelsonic]

The most important character in the discussion has been conveniently omitted: the downloader, who has enough money to buy a computer and pay for Internet access,

Or maybe his parents or relatives bought it for him, or the person is a teen living at home using a family computer and parentally paid-for internet? Your dichotomy is too simplistic.

Re:torrent

[Travelsonic]

That argument, "it is to hard!" is so damn silly.

Not if you had an understanding about the flaws in each and every method listed/proposed, or understood how people can/do get around them.

but they can develop heuristic methods [wikipedia.org] to flag the content that is most likely warez and then manually remove that.

Yeah, HOW would you implement that? I bet you $50 that any method can be worked around with relative ease, AND/OR has a strong possibility for false positives.

For example, if a file gets more than 100 downloads per hour, it is most likely some copyrighted game or movie.

So, it's copyrighted, so what? Everything that can be copyrighted is in the U.S [and other countries with similar laws], and a lot of things legally free are copyrighted. I hate when people make the axis the issue hinges on about copyright or lack therefore since that is not the case. The issue is copyrighted materials being shared ILLEGALLY - there's the key phrase, ILLEGALLY - as in without permission from the copyright holder when usual legal defenses can't/don't apply.

Is there file part of a 30 parts big rar archive? Probably warez too because no one else but warez groups share files like that.

[citation needed]
Seriously, warez groups, when they use non-torrent technologies, do use multi part archives, but they aren't the only ones.

These dirt-simple heuristic methods that I thought up in about five minutes could be used by rapidshare to eliminate 90% or more of all copyrighted content shared on their site

... and since your simple method is so simple, it doesn't address just the illegal stuff, but everything on there and now you have a lot of people pissed off at you. Good job.

...with few false positives and very little manual work needed. "

Again, no, since you hinge your criteria on trivial things - copyright status [a lot of legally free files are copyrighted], archive type [many people use multi-part archives, not just illegal content providers], you will have a LOT of false positives.

It is not rocket science, it is a few days work at most for a competent developer to implement this system.

Not really.

The only reason rapidshare is not doing it, is because they profit from the "sharing" of it on their site.

[citation needed]

Re:torrent

[laughingcoyote]

I certainly see where you're coming from, but I think one could argue YouTube has "substantial non-infringing uses". Aside from copyright holders putting major stuff up themselves to promote it, there are also an awful lot of self-made videos on YouTube. There are people holding entire conversations and debates in a video format, with points and counterpoints stretching over several responses, from people who are relatively well-known to the guy down the street. I'd say that's a pretty substantial legitimate use.

Same for Rapidshare. I've used it to transfer large files plenty of times, especially when the person I'm transferring it to is across the world and may download it when I'm fast asleep.

"Policing" such a service would be impossible. Even YouTube, with Google behind it, can't cut anything out but the dead-obvious stuff. Anyone with any skill can circumvent it, and the methods are widely known. Having humans check manually would be prohibitively expensive, not to mention they'd have to be aware of every work currently under copyright, and each time contact the copyright holder to see if they're the uploader (after all, if I make a video of my dog, it's technically still copyrighted!)

And without the immunity provisions, we'd probably never have had a YouTube. Or a Rapidshare, or a Pastebin, or web forums, or freemail providers, or.... Hell, for that matter, we probably wouldn't have a Slashdot. The risk would just be too high, when a site has to take responsibility for policing everything its users post. It would be like asking a restaurant owner to monitor the conversations of every patron to ensure they're not discussing something illegal, and holding them responsible if anything slips through.

If that means there's a choice between innovation and copyright, I'll gladly take innovation. That might mean some dinosaurs will die. That does happen sometimes. They'll be replaced with something better suited to the new environment, as is the way of these things.

Re:torrent

[grep -v '.*' *]

Would you consider ... ISPs evil for providing their customers upstream bandwidth?

If you're the MPAA or RIAA, why _yes_. What part of that argument do you not understand?

----

Stop it -- you're interfering with my profit margins! What, you want me to adapt to changing conditions?! Who do you think I am, the government?

Re:torrent

[hairyfeet]

But Rapidshare doesn't pass what I call the "Napster Test". That is, if ALL illegal content were to disappear tomorrow, would they still be profitable? I think we ALL know the answer to that, and it is a big NO. They do absolutely nothing to even give the barest token attempt at blocking anything infringing, because it would hurt their business model. You can share "L4D V1 Cracked" and if they get a DMCA you can put up "L4D V1.1 Cracked" and they simply don't care. And your SAME argument could have been used by Audiogalaxy and Napster, but it didn't fly did it? And there is a BIG difference between having a decentralized service like BT and hosting the files like Rapidshare.

Now personally I think that the media companies should just set up game and video channels, where for X pe month you can have all you want DRM free. I also think trying to stop file sharing is like playing whack a mole and is a waste of time. But c'mon guys, Rapidshare? Who in the hell EVER uses Rapidshare for legit anything? Their whole business model is based on snatching content!

Re:torrent

[hairyfeet]

Bingo! We have a winner! For those that say "its too hard!" then how do you explain the absolutely obvious warez on Rapidshare? Pick ANY rapidshare search, your choice, and type in the name of current movies, what do you see? Name of movie, name of date, name of resolution, etc. At least a dozen for Inception when I just checked.

Now are you gonna seriously say finding THAT is too hard? Really? Because if so here is a nice bridge you might be interested in. It isn't that "rapidshare is trying and failing" it is "rapidshare obviously doesn't give a shit" or there would at least be a token effort into hiding the files. Hell my grandma could snatch the latest movies with rapidshare!

Re:torrent

[nurb432]

They didn't host the game, in full or part. They hosted a link to it.

Re:torrent

[517714]

The most important character in the discussion has been conveniently omitted: the downloader, who has enough money to buy a computer and pay for Internet access,

Or maybe his parents or relatives bought it for him, or the person is a teen living at home using a family computer and parentally paid-for internet? Your dichotomy is too simplistic.

There is no false dichotomy since neither I nor the poster to whom I responded suggested that the acts involved represented an exhaustive listing. The discussion is correctly focused on acts, not individuals.

Re:torrent

[Khyber]

anywhere on any chan, many forum sites, etc.

Re:torrent

[Carnildo]

Check all files to identify what filetype they are - jpg/zip/gz/tar/etc... if the file type is not known, disallow it. Yes I'm sure someone will invent a zip file format with a JPG header.

Already been done. The JPEG format permits any amount of garbage after the end-of-data marker. The ZIP format permits any amount of garbage at the beginning of the file. Cat a JPEG and a ZIP together, and you've got a file that's both a valid JPEG and a valid ZIP.

Re:torrent

[Mike Buddha]

I'm ambivalent.

I have a tough time with the idea that I'm being immoral when I watch something that someone else tells me that I don't have the right to watch because I haven't paid them.

Is it stealing when you "take" something that does not deny its utility to another person? One could argue that by not paying, I'm denying it's creator the utility of the money that I should have paid, but that could be said of anything. In not buying a new t-shirt I'm denying the vendor the utility of the money that I didn't spend as well. Having never agreed to not be entertained by things I haven't paid for, I'm just not completely on the side of the media companies.

I understand that if I don't pay for anything I watch or read or listen to, those things will cease being available, but is it wrong to watch or read or listen without paying? When I go to my friends house to watch a movie I'm not paying, either (although I'm absolutely positive that if Comcast could, they'd charge a per user fee for viewing their content.)

It's easy to rationalize by saying that movie studios are still making tons of money, so in spite of my transgressions they are successful and the increment that they would be more successful would be infinitesimal if I were to pay for everything. On the other hand record companies are going down the tubes. But, record companies got greedy when CDs came out and tripled the price of music releases, making it far easier to rationalize copying music. That coupled with their aggressive legal tactics regarding music played in public places and their handling of alledged music downloaders makes their loss of prominence understandable.

     

Re:torrent

[517714]

You answered this completely when you used the word rationalize. One does not rationalize moral acts.

Re:torrent

[Travelsonic]

Really? There has never been a time in history where moral acts had to be rationalized? Of course you forget first off that morals are subjective - and that while common ground exists within the scope of "civilized society" not everybody shares the exact same views, degrees of belief on X Y Z issues than say the person next to them.

Re:torrent

[cheekyjohnson]

If your whole business model collapses when you remove all the illegal material, then you are probably being immoral.

Illegal is not the same as immoral.

contrast with pirateBay

[Anonymous Coward]

RapidShare, hosts (unknowingly) copyright content, not guilty

PirateBay, doesn't host (knowingly) copyright content, guilty

granted, different jurisdictions

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[91degrees]

Oh come on! The Pirate Bay knew that most of the stuff was infringing copyright, and even if they weren't aware of it should have been after receiving legal demands to remove access to the material.

Rapidshare actually made some effort to prevent distribution.

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[Rysc]

No.

Rapidshare hosts (unknowingly) copyrighted content, not guilty.

PirateBay does not host any copyrighted content, guilty.

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[Josh Triplett]

RapidShare hosts content themselves, and takes down content when requested to. Atari sued them because they didn't want to keep sending takedown notices, and would prefer that RapidShare do their job for them, like YouTube currently does for copyright holders ("here, tell us what files you don't like look like, and we'll handle it automatically"). The courts sensibly said that RapidShare doesn't have to offer any more help to Atari than they already do.

PirateBay doesn't host content themselves, infringing or otherwise, which means they very sensibly don't respond to takedown notices. That then confuses and annoys both copyright holders and courts, who can't quite figure out that PirateBay has done nothing wrong, because naturally they *must* be doing something wrong if they're not responding to takedown notices.

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[91degrees]

They weren't found guilty of hosting. They were found guilty of assisting copyright infringement.

Given that I used TPB for most of my vopyright infringement at one point, I can certainly agree, they assisted me greatly.

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[Rysc]

Except that in the jurisdiction in which The Pirate Bay operates there is no legal way to demand that you remove a link to copyrighted material that you do not yourself host. That's a USA law and not found in most other places.

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[commodore64_love]

Awe..... pity those poor Corporations with their billion-dollar capital and millions in annual revenue, while they layoff programmers who did nothing wrong (except they are unneeded human cattle) (and Indian,Chinese programmers are cheaper). Ahh poor little baby megacorps. Ahhh.

Bullshit. I don't give a fuck if movies/games the Megacorps make get downloaded. They will STILL find a way to make money, even if it's only through theater tickets and Walmart DVD sales. I think they will survive. '

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[TheRaven64]

they very sensibly don't respond to takedown notices

Yes they do, they have an entire page full of taunting 'haha, we're not in your jurisdiction' replies that they've sent.

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[91degrees]

Hey, I have hundreds of gigs of pirated media. I'm not criticising the ethics. Just pointing out that if you do have a business that exists solely because people are using it to break the law then don't expect it to last.

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[TFAFalcon]

But TPB didn't HOST the files. They just helped people find them.

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[commodore64_love]

>>>If you do have a business that exists solely because people are using it to break the law then don't expect it to last.

The New York, Boston, and Las Vegas Mafia disagree
;-)

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[advocate_one]

what I find highly amusing about PirateBay is that they take down fake & malware torrents very quickly when downloaders report them...

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[91degrees]

Or more to the point, made a business of finding files for people to pirate.

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[BitZtream]

Yea, you should completely ignore intent when thinking about these sorts of things.

Re:contrast with pirateBay

[angel'o'sphere]

No.

Rapidshare hosts (unknowingly) copyrighted content, not guilty.

PirateBay does not host any copyrighted content, guilty.

I guess we all get your point however as an advice on wording: nothing in the world is non copy righted
There might be stuff you can legally copy and distribute. But that stuff does not have no copy right.
If no other rule or law applies, the copyright is always by the creator of a work. This posting e.g. including the quotation of my parent poster, is copyrighted by ME. I simply dont get it, what is so hard in understanding this?
Every content of any file sharing service is: copy righted there is no singel content that is not.
If you upload your private files, encrypted or not, if you upload a photo of your friend, boy friend or girl friend it is copy righted. It is copy righted even 2 times. You as the photographer have the copyright on the photo itself. It is copyrighted with your name, I may not copy it without your consent, regardless whether you have "uploaded it" to a "file sharing" service, with out your consent I may not download it! AND, what you are very likely even less aware off: if that photo you made is a picture of ME you may not even upload YOUR photo without my consent. In other words if you publish the photo of your GF that you have made on facebook, you are already infringing copyright, as your GF has to consent that you publish it.

Again: what is the problem with you guys that you dont get this very simple concept?

angel'o'sphere

Re:Atari Still Exists?

[sirber]

not!

I don't believe it

[paganizer]

If nothing else, this article led me to the Wikipedia page that provided the information that Alone in the Dark was remade in 2008, and that Atari is suing pretty much everyone that has anything to do with it.

It was REALLY exciting, until I realized that no North American courts are involved... A sane decision concerning copyright infringement by a U.S. Court would be really fantastic.

Re:I don't believe it

[KDR_11k]

From what I read playing that AITD remake alone is punishment enough, no need to rub it in with a lawsuit.

Re:I don't believe it

[c0lo]

A sane decision concerning copyright infringement by a U.S. Court would be really seldom.

On the fringe of being an oxymoron.

Re:Well well well

[91degrees]

Well, yes. But there's only so much you can do. No provider can be 100% certain none of the material is breaching copyright. I think it comes down to what measures they take to avoid this, amongst others.

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:Well well well

[beothorn]

#disagree

This is slashdot not twitter. If you know a bulletproof way to stop someone from uploading any copyrighted material to a upload site, please, enlighten us.

Re:Atari Still Exists?

[KDR_11k]

The name still exists. Currently Infogrames is wearing the face of that particular corpse but at least they have been around for pretty long so they're somewhat deserving of holding the name.

Re:Well well well

[CRCulver]

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

Re:Well well well

[TheLink]

Yes. Sharing files that are too big to be emailed.

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

[Kjella]

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.

While I agree with the ruling, the analogy must be one of the worst I've heard. They are the tool actually executing the production of additional copies, they're closer to the knife or the gun than anything else. A better analogy might be factory workers that produce faulty and deadly brakes from a bad design. They may be the ones doing it, but they're not the ones responsible for it.

Bad analogy

[Mathinker]

Big difference.

YouTube displays the content it hosts, which requires that it is uploaded unencrypted. Rapidshare doesn't display uploaded content, which means it is trivial for anyone to upload an archive which includes encrypted content and also a CAPTCHA revealing the password.

Only YouTube's business model is amenable to automatic copyright infringement detection.

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.

Re:Well well well

[dbune]

Insightful !

Morality

[mangu]

Rapidshare may be legally right, morally they are very wrong.

A law that extends copyright for decades after the author's death is immoral. Extending copyrights decades after a work was created is immoral.

So, should we follow the law or should we try to be moral?

If the law had any relation to morality it would follow the constitutional mandate that copyrights are for the authors and last for a limited time. They are not for a corporation to extend indefinitely long after the original term expired and the author died.

Re:Morality

[delinear]

That just proves that copyright is useless for its primary purpose as well as beggaring society in the long run as a secondary consequence.

Re:Morality

[Simon80]

Thank you. Mod parent up.

Cryptic names for pirated stuff

[vgerclover]

(...) 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?

Some groups have been doing this for some time now, generally using the first letters of the name. For this it might be something along the lines of al.int.d.r01.

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]

Re:One click?

[delinear]

Hmm, I don't have much prior experience of Rapidshare but I've downloaded a few patches from there in the last couple of weeks and I got none of that - just a link to a page with two BIG buttons, one for premium (click for immediate download) and one for free (have to wait like 30 seconds or something but then I think the download started by itself), so one click or no click and a short wait - I just switched tabs until it was ready to download. Admittedly this wasn't for large files (all under 2mb, they only hosted in the first place to get around some aggressive email firewall) and not for "illegal" material (but I imagine the process would be the same, after all, they can hardly claim "we have no way to know which content is illegal" if they show different screens already for illegal stuff).

Re:One click?

[eulernet]

Or you can use jdownloader:
  http://jdownloader.org/

No North American courts?

[Theaetetus]

If nothing else, this article led me to the Wikipedia page that provided the information that Alone in the Dark was remade in 2008, and that Atari is suing pretty much everyone that has anything to do with it.

It was REALLY exciting, until I realized that no North American courts are involved... A sane decision concerning copyright infringement by a U.S. Court would be really fantastic.

Apparently, while this article may have led you to the Wiki page, it didn't lead you to the article's third paragraph, which states:

This is not the first time that the file hosting company has come under the legal spotlight. Last year, the same German appeals court overturned a separate ruling against them, while a US court has also decided the company is not liable for its users behaviour.

i'd be concerned about it too

[smash]

I mean piracy of that game? I got 5 minutes into the demo, bored out of my brain and quit.

Why bother wasting the bandwidth?

Re:i'd be concerned about it too

[zmollusc]

There was a demo?
The rat-thing leaping up and down at the window scared the crap out of me. And the creepy statue on the stairs.

Re:Well well well

[icebraining]

if such hosting sites were to implement these features, or at least any of the latter (the first being very easily circumvented), they would soon find their visitor and premium account holder numbers dwindling and go out of business as the users flock to another hosting site which does not implement these features.
You may say "speculation! You are suggesting that such hosting sites exist only by the grace of illegal content without any data to back up these claims!" and I would say you are right;

I wouldn't. Who in their right mind would give their real name and bank account number to Rapidshare, regardless of the legality of the file? Even if you don't care about the privacy issues, it would take so much time nobody would use it.
And preventing me from uploading encrypted personal files would make me use another service.

So they could perfectly lose business even from legal distribution.

Re:Please elaborate on your method

[smash]

ok dbune (i am not the AC but i'll have a go anyhow). elaborate. what should rapidshare do to prevent this?

Re:Well well well

[Threni]

Are you sure? Slashdot exists to demonstrate the truism `all analogy is fraud`. There should be a monthly roundup of the 'best' - it would be a giggle.

Put the words "public domain" in front of the...

[Fibe-Piper]

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

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

the sacred words "films, music and and ebooks" and you have actually made the case that RapidShare or any other file sharing technologies should be protected by the courts.

Re:Well well well

[thoromyr]

Have you ever heard of napster? They were kinda held accountable for hosting mp3 files. Now, they also indexed it which rapidshare does not, but rapid share pushes very hard for users to pay them money which is not something napster did and is one of the things that has gotten limewire into a lot of trouble. In fact, post napster, a major point (Bearshare, Kazaa and limewire at the least) has been the company knowing about the primary purpose of their service (copyright infringement) and attempting to profit from that.

I'm not going to argue ethics or morals, I'm not a lawyer nor do I have any great knowledge of the details of this particular case, I'm just pointing out that it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if rapidshare ended up losing a case like this at some point for the foregoing reasons.

Re:2008 not 1992

[commodore64_love]

Anon. Coward writes:
>>>Please stop posting.
>>>Please, let your mama double-checks for you.

Why do Anonymous Cowards have shit for brains? The article says "Alone in the Dark" which is part 1, not 5. RTFA. LINK: and QUOTE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alone_in_the_dark "Alone in the Dark, the original game in the series, was developed by Infogrames [Atari] and released for PC in 1992....."

Re:Well well well

[querk44]

As others have pointed out, this is a bad analogy. Without passing judgment on whether or not RapidShare's conduct rose to this level, a better analogy (as much as I cringe at bringing murder into a conversation about copyright infringement) would be aiding and abetting in a murder. In copyright law, this is called secondary liability. Essentially, secondary liability requires some showing that on party has facilitated, induced, or is otherwise responsible for another parties' infringement of a copyright. The party does not have to directly infringe someone's copyright, similar to way a person aiding or abetting in a murder does not actually commit the murder.

Whether or not you agree with holding parties secondarily liable (and the DMCA has provided safe harbor mechanisms for many of the situations you probably wouldn't want service providers to be held liable), many cases have used the theory to hold parties liable that did not "originate the content" (remember Napster?).

Re:Nope, wrong direction, unless you're a commie

[Desler]

Also, P2P sharing loses no money since no money has changed hands, whereas someone definitely paid for the proprietary app and that money rightly belongs to the GPL programmer(s) that made the actual product.

So exactly like how Rapidshare gets tons of people to buy premium accounts that is probably majority used by people downloading copyright-infringing content? Thus they are making money that should rightfully be going to the copyright owners. Otherwise, if you are going to disrespect their copyrights, why should anyone respect the copyrights to GPL code?

Re:2008 not 1992

[commodore64_love]

>>>The article does not say that

You're right. The article does NOT say it is Alone in the Dark Part 5 or AITD: Near Death Investigation. (If you think it does, then show it to me.) It simply says "Alone in the Dark" and the ONLY game that ever received that title, without numbers or subtitles, is the original. It's just like saying "Star Trek". That refers to the original, not any of the sequels. If the sequel was intended, then it would read Star Trek TNG or Star Trek DS9 not just Star Trek.

Got to find someone to blame ?

[Self Programmed]

One should realize that the attacks by some people (and many lawyers) upon the freedoms of others, if all were allowed to succeed, would restrict most of the free speech and idea sharing, such as in the US. It has been done before and is what places like China engage in now. Listen to them and you will hear, that there will always be "other people" who need to be restricted in what they post/transmit/say, according to the some who are bothered by it. There are too many people that for everything want to have someone else to blame. And too many lawyers who are willing (for a hefty fee) to make the attempt to stick it to the someone selected to be the scapegoat. This is a much wider problem than this one case.