German Court Orders RapidShare to Proactively Filter Songs

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 23, 2009 - 6:52am.

Berlin - A German court has sided with copyright society GEMA against free file-hosting service Rapidshare, which must now monitor its site to ensure that some 5,000 songs are not posted for distribution on its servers, Billboard reported.

"This means that the copyright holder is no longer required to perform the ongoing and complex checks," GEMA said in a statement.

"We are confident that in this way we will be able to reduce the illegal use of the GEMA repertoire on the Internet to a negligible level."

Another German court ruled in October 2008 that RapidShare must start proactively removing copyrighted content from its servers.

In April, the company reportedly began handing over IP data on its users to the record labels.

The company, however, did not seem distressed by the new ruling.

"We do not consider the court's decision to be a breakthrough," RapidShare COO Bobby Chang told Billboard.

"As other proceedings in similar disputes with GEMA have shown, there is considerable disparity amongst the individual courts in some cases. Our experience is that the courts of appeal tend to restrict the scope of the decisions made by the lower courts."

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/kq8xn (Billboard)

http://snipurl.com/kq92k (DMW previous coverage)

http://www.rapidshare.com