Third-party file-upload services like Rapidshare and Sendspace, where any user can anonymously host large files, have been around for a number of years now, but they really only became a serious concern for the (international) music industry over the last 18 months thanks to the fact that you can now pretty much type any album’s name and the word “Rapidshare” into Google and locate a blog or message board hosting it for free. GEMA, Germany’s performing rights society, has taken a run at (partially) Deutschland-based Rapidshare before for copyright infringement, but it has recently issued a press release claiming that a Düsseldorf court has ordered Rapidshare to now make sure its users aren’t using its server hospitality for lawbreaking purposes. The folks at TorrentFreak are (naturally) suspicious of this claim without official court documents to back it up, but they do note that if it’s true, the order’s “instruction for Rapidshare to take preventative action is new, and despite another similar court case reaching a different decision.” Read this, all you .rar blog pirates, and lament.
GEMA are trying to imply that as a result of the decision, Rapidshare will be forced to take preventative action to stop GEMA works from even getting onto their servers, rather than a DMCA-style after-the-fact removal. GEMA says that if Rapidshare are forced to filter they will likely end up with a service that’s not worth operating, so they may decide to shut it down completely.
The GEMA press release has been published before the complete court decision, so it should be digested with at least a degree of scepticism, considering the huge amounts of spin employed by anti-piracy agencies and the music industries alike.
The general idea, however, is that if the court has decided that Rapidshare is responsible for pre-policing user-uploaded content, the effort involved will prove too great for the site to remain profitable for its owners. Thankfully TorrentFreak’s readers are at the ready with some MacGyver-esque ideas on how the embattled company can remain in business/continue allowing some guy with a Blogspot account to eventually host the full Gnarls Barkley album when it leaks in, oh, 72 hours:
6 Jan 29, 2008 at 10:49 by nom nom nom
People could just put passwords on the file and on the rar then change the name to something like “holiday 07″ and then batch file into a HD wallpaper and if rs sees where are all the “clicks” are coming from you can just use lix or summat…
11 Jan 29, 2008 at 12:12 by Anonymous
how about moving the servers to another country.. german copyright laws are rather draconian.. among all other issues they have with censorship etc.. it’s great that they have to shut down the entire site just because a few files are infringing.. it’s a wonder how they could stay in that fucked up country that long..
15 Jan 29, 2008 at 13:30 by qm2006
Because RS is run by Germans, still has a office in Germany and does business there.
They need to move completely to Switzlerland to be safe from the german GEMA.
But the general consensus seems to be good riddance to bad rubbish, because Sendspace et al are soooooo much better. Like, how dare Rapidshare demand your dollars for a “premium account” that allows you to download as much as you want, whenever you want? Doesn’t money changing hands kinda take the point/fun of out thievery?
Rapidshare To Be Forced To Shut Down Following Court Defeat? [TorrentFreak]
Encrypt file names?
Because ultimately thats how Google and other search engines can find the files.
Every time a file is uploaded the file name should be encrypted or changed by the server.
…remember kids; Sharing is not a crime.
who uses real names these days? Just rename the file something less inconspicuous, password protect it, and post it on a rapidshare search site. Long live filesharing.
I settled on Rapidshare as the site to upload any mp3s I wanted to post on my blogs like 2 years ago, and just never got around to seeing if any other sites are better. I guess now’s the time to change. So what’s good, Sendspace? zshare? I don’t really download illegally much at all but I upload a lot of rare/obscure stuff to share on a regular basis.
@xint: You don’t encrypt the front end (ie. the link/image on your blog) you encrypt/protect the actual file you upload to rapidshare. Your link becomes the identifying tool instead of the name of the file as seen by the service.
@Al Shipley: Mediafire, Z-share, and Megaupload all seem to be good lateley. Sendspace is simple, but a little slow. YSI would be good if they didn’t have a low limit and an automatic yank after 2 weeks.
@Al Shipley: I really like Z-Share–no pop-ups and after 20 minutes you can download the file. I don’t mind Sendspace. Megaupload has popups the last time I didn’t use a pop-up blocker.
Rapidshare is annoying as hell anyway. “wait another 46.6 minutes”…
Mediafire is my favorite.
@Al Shipley: I’ve liked DivShare and ZShare for the last year or so, because they allow you to stream the song without necessarily downloading it. I’ve got friends that didn’t start listening to the music on my blog until they knew they could preview it without having it littering their desktop. For full albums, I dig Badongo, at least since MediaFire lost it’s teeth about four months ago. Ultimately, though, whenever you get in a pattern, something gets shut down, and RapidShare’s popularity spikes again.
*pours out 40oz for the original incarnation of YouSendIt*
To hell with Rapidshare. I agree…anyone that pays money for a premium pass is an idiot.
Sendspace is great and simple. It’s definitely slower, but at least you don’t have to wait 90 minutes after you download a file to get another.
Mediafire is also great because you can save files directly to your own little virtual drive, so if you cant’ download them now, you can have them stored for later.
anyone that pays money for a premium pass is an idiot.
Or: “What? Give my credit card information to an possibly shady business that is in all likelihood violating copyright law, thus giving the RIAA and other such societies worldwide a way to find me? Sign me up!”
I wondered when this was going to start being a concern. I mean, this is basically what we had during the pre-napster days, back when 128 kbps was pretty rad and, yes, people would actually encode albums at 96 kbps. At least back then you had to know (somewhat) how to use an ftp client, so Joe Nimrod in the Library had a difficult time stealing music.
Now I wonder how long it’s going to be before people start putting pressure on Rapidshare et al. to cough up IPs that downloaded particular albums or tracks – and, of course, how long before they start putting bunk uploads all over it to snare people.
How many times are we going to go through this cycle before they realize that you can’t reasonably treat digitized media as physical goods?
Also: when are “they” going to start trying to crack down on newsgroups? I’m guessing they’ll target those usenet ISPs for logs, especially to go after uploaders.
Then after everyone who is doing something illegal on the internet (read: everybody) uses proxies to try to hide, they’ll go after the proxy companies.
Boy, the future looks bright.
Today, with the fast lifestyle that everyone is having, credit cards have a huge demand in the economy. Persons from every field are using the credit card and people who aren’t using the card have made up their minds to apply for 1. Thanks for giving your ideas on credit cards.