RapidShare Ordered to Filter Uploads

The German government is trying to clamp down on illegal files sharing through anonymous download service RapidShare. The service is an easy way to share any type of content with many, and unfortunately, that makes it also a way to share illegal content with no easy way to track the movement of material.

The Germans are trying to attack the problem at the source, which is ultimately much smarter than the way in which some US companies have tried to police things here, by ending services, or blaming the innocent users of a service.

Rapidshare is a service that makes it easy for users to upload and share files with a large number of people. It can come in handy whether you want to send a large file to a friend who has an email service with file attachment size limits or you want to share files with visitors to your website without paying a hefty web hosting bill.

But Rapidshare has never gained the respect that sites like YouSendIt have. YouSendIt provided a similar service, but it’s aimed at sending files to just a handful of users. RapidShare, on the other hand, has become popular with users who upload copyrighted software, music, and movies. And today the company could be paying the price of allowing users to get away with those activities.

A German court is ordering Rapidshare to remove about 5,000 songs from its servers. The lawsuit was brought by GEMA, a group representing copyright holders. The court has ruled that Rapidshare must begin filtering content to prevent users from sharing any songs from artists covered by GEMA. The court estimates the value of those songs at about 24 million Euros (roughly $34 million).

Of course, it’s pretty difficult to filter content on a site like Rapidshare, where users can easily ZIP files, change file names, or make other small changes to trick any filtering software that’s put in place. I guess we’ll have to see if Rapidshare ties to take any steps toward implementing content filters, and if the court decides that a good faith effort is good enough. Or maybe Rapidshare will just appeal the ruling.

The above is from DownloadSquad

Strangely, I have never heard of YouSendIt, a service the above author seems to laud, while calling into question the use of RapidShare. I am certain that the site gets abused, but also there are those small utility and program writers, who can’t afford the hits on their site for downloads of their work, so it gets put on RapidShare. Downloading utilities from freeware authors is how I first became aware of RapidShare .

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