infringement

Rapidshare is one of the world's largest file-hosting sites with millions of files stored on its servers. Rapidshare is a one click hosting provides paid and free services, owned by German and running from Switzerland. The Regional Court of Hamburg has ruled in favor of German collecting society GEMA, which had requested that the court issue an order prohibiting file-hosting service rapidshare.com from making around 5,000 music tracks available on the Internet. [ Read more ]

The Regional court orders Rapidshare to pay a 34 million dollar fine to GEMA, and to start actively filtering and removing the files it hosts for copyrighted content. Initally the case was brought on by copyright protection association GEMA. The court also mentions the precautions allegedly taken by rapidshare and other file hosting website is not sufficient to prevent copyright issues.

"The judgment states that the hosting service itself is now responsible for making sure that none of the music tracks concerned are distributed via its platform in the future. This means that the copyright holder is no longer required to perform the ongoing and complex checks," mentioned in GEMA declaration.

Bobby Chang, COO of RapidShare AG in Cham (Switzerland)