Archive for the ‘Germany’ tag
Rapid Share Instructed by Courts to “Do More”
In a federal ruling, GEMA won a small victory against file hosting company Rapid Share. The company argues that it already employs MD5 checking to prevent files that were previously reported from being uploaded again. AVN reports,AVN:Court Rules RapidShare Must Eliminate Infringing Content More Efficiently, that the German Government wasn’t buying it, and needs them to do more:
a German court has ruled that RapidShare’s efforts to fight piracy are lacking. The Hamburg district court’s decision states that RapidShare must take action against infringing content the moment copyright holders make the company aware it…
In addition to quickly taking down copyrighted content, Rapidshare also has to “proactively check content before publishing it.”
RapidShare employs a MD5 filter to prevent the upload of previously removed content, but the court’s ruling says infringers need only to alter a few bytes of a file in order to evade the filter.
German courts have ruled several times in the favor of content owners, and may be one of the more favorable court systems in the world for people holding claim to intellectual property rights.