RapidShare Urges US To Punish Linking Sites and Not File-Sharing Sites

hypnosec writes "RapidShare has said that the U.S. government should crack down on linking sites rather than punishing file-sharing sites and strangling innovation. The file-sharing site is understandably a little worried about the recent crackdowns on sites involved in or found to be promoting piracy. Daniel Raimer, RapidShare's Chief Legal Officer, is to meet with technology leaders and law enforcement at the Technology Policy Institute forum. Responding to a public consultation on the future of U.S. IP enforcement, the company emphasized that linking sites are the real problem. It wrote, 'Rather than enacting legislation that could stifle innovation in the cloud, the U.S. government should crack down on this critical part of the online piracy network.'"

Comments

Rapidshare HAS NOW MADE THEMSELVES the problem

[gavron]

The "problem" isn't file sharing. That's legal. It's not linking. It's legal. What's against the law
are violations of the law (e.g. copyright).

HOWEVER, in saying "don't come after us, go after linking sites" rapidshare has thrown the
babies to the wolves in hopes that they can evade a similar fate.

Rapidshare, for that, deserves to die. Linking sites and sharing sites are legal. The US Federal
government and its ICE dogs will sooner or later be brought to task. (Rojadirecta probably).
We'll still remember that Rapidshare threw everyone else to the dogs.

E

Re:It would be a dangerous precedent.

[clonehappy]

Facilitating copyright infringement is a crime and has been upheld by the US courts. Linking to copyrighted material would fall under facilitation. You may not agree with it, but that's the way it is. Free speech doesn't give you cover for it either.

And the US courts are always infallible, right? You sound awfully Team USA with your statement.

If someone asks Siri where to hide a dead body, she will give them the locations of Dumps, Mineshafts, Quarries, etc. Would that make Apple accessory to murder?

The real battle

[Shagg]

RapidShare, MegaUpload, Demonoid, etc all provide competition to the distribution monopoly of the RIAA members. That's their real problem. It isn't about piracy. The RIAA member/cartel are more worried about artists deciding that the middlemen are no longer necessary.

As long as the RIAA has their way, it will be impossible to operate a file locker/linking service without being arbitrarily shutdown by the "piracy" boogeyman. That's what they want, and right now they're the ones writing the laws.

Crack down on Hollywood Accounting instead

[Dan667]

much bigger problem.

Re:How does this even make sense?

[QuasiSteve]

The UK just did it..... sent a man to jail for 4 years because he provided links to piratebay, demonoid, and other sites that had TV shows/movies.

That sounds innocuous enough - but keep in mind that he actually made GBP35,000/month in 2009 with these activities.
Given that they were merely link sites, his hosting costs weren't going to put much of a dent into those figures.

Now I'm not saying that his profiting is what made it illegal (it was illegal either way), or that 4 years in jail is an appropriate sentence - but let's not kid ourselves by suggesting that these site operators are only wishing to give to the world, to provide cultural enrichment to the needy, etc. They most certainly do profit by providing an avenue through which 'piracy' is committed.

That said, under my copyright reform suggestion, linking sites would in fact not be a valid target for legal action. But not because of some misguided 'free speech' concern. ( In case you were referring to the Pussy Riot thing - wow. Did you really just equate the two? If so, you may wish to read up on that case a bit more. It's many times more scary than any piracy-linksite getting targeted is. )

Re:Darn you Google!

[hairyfeet]

Everybody is making jokes when the simple fact is just like the VCR there are plenty of non copyright uses for these sites. lets take myself for example, i have used sites like Rapidshare to send some of my own musical works to someone halfway across the planet so they could load it up and add their own tracks, I've used them to send .reg files for basic fixes like the PITA "Windows no sound device even though the drive is installed" bug, used them to store zip files of family photos so I can send them across the country to distant relatives, plenty of things other than the latest Titney Spears you can use these sites for.

In the end it shouldn't be their job to have to constantly go through everyone's stuff to make the *.A.A happy, we've already seen that doesn't work as you can simply change the name of the files and you are back to square one. No they should be treated no different than Google who takes things down when they get a request. Problem is the *.A.As are lazy bastards and want to pass all the expense to everyone else and they have no problem with bribing officials to write the laws to let them pass on the expense.