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German Court Rules Rapidshare Is Legal, But Must Adjust Content Policies
New submitter loosescrews writes "Online file locker Rapidshare is legal in Germany, but has to adjust its policy regarding infringing content, the Higher Regional Court in Hamburg has ruled. Rapidshare plans to appeal. Rapidshare was sued by the German copyright organization Gema which represents 64.000 copyright holders. After reading the verdict, both parties claim they are victorious."
It would have been nice if the summary had described the "adjustment" that Rapidshare is being required to make:
The copyright organisation had asked the court to order Rapidshare to scan files during the upload process, but the court took another approach, ruling that Rapidshare must actively monitor incoming links from external sites to the files it hosts and take down any illegal files thus identified.
I.e., if a warez site links to a Rapidshare file, then Rapidshare will deactivate the file.
Amusingly enough, Rapidshare already did this, which is why warez sites typically don't allow posting clickable links. Non-clickable link = you have to copy and paste = no HTTP referer = Rapidshare is none the wiser.
As it happens, though, it was the lawyers for both parties talking. After that they went out together for caviar.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Just make your content as easy (or easier ) available than on rapidshare. Note that I said "easier" not "cheaper" or "free" just "easier".
Sometimes it seems the priority one of the artists (or perhaps the distributors) is to PREVENT people from getting their stuff. Last Month I was looking for some older songs I remembered. No CD available at all, Only an MP3 on amazon.com I tried to buy it, but I wasn't allowed. So I had to spend about an hour tracking it down "some other way", since nobody was willing to offer me a option to actually buy it in a way that would have supported the artist.
Last week I got shipped 5 Blu-Rays hat I ordered. Only 2 of them worked out of the box, for 2 others I first had to upgrade my players firmware first, the fifth didn't work even then but funny enough I had no problem ripping it and then watching the copy.
So every time when I have to decide whether to buy or pirate, I have to take into account the amount of work it takes to get the actual purchased copies to even WORK. The only way out of this problem for customers AND content creators in my opinion to cut out the distributor middle-man. It used to be they were the ones who had better technical means to distribute content from the artists to the masses. But now every artist could have way better means to get his content to the masses, and in the end have perhaps $0.90 of $1 left over for himself.
> but not the creators?
It is OK for creators to make money off content... if they can. If people are willing to pay. If they are not willing and prefer to produce their copies themselves instead bying them from you, you're SOL and have to change jobs to something wehere people want to pay for what you do. What is NOT ok is to solve the problem simply by making technological advancements and the modern copying infrastructure illegal with the intent to simulate the 50's where nobody had a PC and nobody had his PC connected with billions of other people with a PC. "Now as all of you have those wonderful futuristic tools became real... dont use them, because people will lose jobs."
For your business model (selling copies) to work, you basically have to make people forever stay in the 50's. This is the same as if people in the 16th century made book printing illegal to protect manuscript scribes. You're basically a luddite fighting technological advancement because it obsoletes your business. Do you sincerely think you can win that fight? Before, you could run a business to distribute stuff to people, now they can do it themselves. The distribution problem has now been solved. Your business model is simply gone. Adapt or die, you won't win this.