News: Court orders RapidShare to check user uploads for piracy

A higher regional court in Hamburg, Germany has reportedly ordered file sharing service RapidShare to screen pirated content from its site. This decision reflects those of a number of lower courts that have ruled that the site does not do enough to stop piracy taking place on its servers. This ruling comes off the heel of January’s MegaUpload fiasco, which saw the popular file-sharing service and the like shut down. RapidShare followed a different business model to that of MegaUpload, where the latter gave financial incentives to the uploads of popular files.

As per initial reports, (an official written account of the court’s ruling has not been released yet) the site will have now to have to monitor its users files for copyright infringement before they are made available for download. Because this wont be the easiest of task to perform manually, the site will probably develop a software-based solution to perform this task. The content industry has, for a long time, been wanting such a policy where sites, rather than copyright owners, to take responsibility for pirated material. As of now, video-sharing sites like YouTube only give copyright owners tools to search for and notify the site of infringing material.

TorrentFreak has reported that the ruling goes against a judgement passed by the European Court of Justice which only last month ruled that Social Networking site Netlog should not be forced to proactively check content as it may violate the privacy of its users. Unlike Netlog, RapidShare does not have a social element, and may not be acquainted with such protection. However, the sit may still appeal this latest decision, and they have also made recent changes to prevent privacy taking place on its servers.

Only last month, the company limited the speed of unverified downloads to 30Kbps, which forced uploaders wanting to share their files with non paying users to give up their anonymity to lift the limits. The site agues that most of its users downloading or uploading pirated material prefer not to pay so they avoid being linked to illegal activity. Time will tell if this decision will satisfy the content industry. With that said, it is a right step being made for a file sharing site that is actively trying to seek legitimacy.