Rapidshare.com loses court battle
26 January 2008 17:04 by Andre "DVDBack23" Yoskowitz
According to P2P blog, the German music rights holder GEMA has won its court case against the massive file hoster Rapidshare.com. In a press release, GEMA announced that the Dusseldorf district court had ruled that Rapidshare will for now on have to block access to any works in the GEMA repertoire.
In its defense, Rapidshare was saying that "only its users can be held responsible for copyright violations." The court apparently disagreed and said that the site was used mainly for illegal activities and that the company generates "substantial" monthly revenue from those illegal activities.
The ruling could have implications for the future of the site on the whole. GEMA's press release read, "The ruling forces Rapidshare to 'take measures that might have the risk of making Rapidshare's service substantially less attractive or even close it down completely.'" That statement means that potentially GEMA can get the entire site shut down if access isn't blocked to GEMA's copy written material.
In the past year GEMA has won two injunctions against the file hoster but never an actual court case. Rapidshare.com is based in Switzerland but Rapidshare.de was originally founded in Germany.
Rapidshare in a bit of trouble!
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