A (Domain) Name Matters: German Judge Orders Rapidshare to Behave: ‘You’re Rapidshare, Not Rapidstore!’
Everything started when Atari notified Rapidshare that they have found pirated copies of their game, Alone in the Dark on Rapidshare servers. Rapidshare immediately removed the copies, however, that wasn’t good enough for Atari, who decided to sue Rapidshare in order to force them to create a better anti-piracy system. The Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf (a lower instance than Federal Court of Law) ruled in Rapidshare’s favour; they argued that it was pretty impossible to keep an eye on the contents of the files they’re hosting.
Enter Wolfgang Kirchhoff, judge of the Federal Court of Law, who overruled the decision of the Higher Regional Court and ruled into Atari’s favour. When Rapidshare tried to convince him that they provide only file storing and transfer services, the jugde simply replied: The company is called Rapidshare and not Rapidstore! And you thought your (domain)name wasn’t important!
Piracy is still a burning issue in the (Internet) society today; regarless of numerous ways to get software for a small fee. Steam, MSDNAA (DreamSpark Premium), GOG.com and many other services are just waiting for you to give out a reasonable fee to enjoy a product which will give you hours of fun – whether we’re talking about games, movies or TV shows.
Still, people seem to like messing around with illegal downloads, applying patches and cracks and exposing their system (and private data) to attackers. Many services for file sharing are aware of the fact that their servers are hosting a bunch of pirated material – a fact they choose to ignore. However, it seems that things are starting to change.
We’re Not Responsible
The problem with online piracy is actually the problem of the web as a medium – who can be held accountable for the data being on a server? The author of the files (game publishers), the owner of the server (service provider) or the person who actually put it there (a pirate)? Or maybe the person downloading those files (end user)? How can you actually tell what is the purpose of the download or even the upload? Should service provider delete those files? Where’s the limit in that?
All of these questions (and many more) made a strong argument in courts when publishers wanted to sue service providers for keeping pirated files and indirectly being a part of illegal activities. However, most of those cases were ruled in service providers’ favour. Take The Pirate Bay for example; they were one of the first that had to shut down, although they didn’t keep actual pirates files on their servers. Germany’s Federal Court of Law decided to take similar actions on some other file sharing service providers, the Rapidshare.
Rapidshare, Not Rapidstore
Rapidshare will have to work on its technical side of the story to prevent future incidents like this, because filing a notification about copyright infringement isn’t enough; they have to provide a way to stop repeated upload of pirated material to happen. Also, they’ll have to browse their entire collection of files and detect and delete pirated content, by the court’s order.
So, you still want to be a pirate?
