German Court: Rapidshare Is Legal But Must Implement 3rd Party Website Monitoring
It’s hard to turn around these days and not hear about another file sharing service that is being dismantled because of governmental pressure. Rapidshare however is not one of those sites in Germany after the court in that country ruled in favor of the file sharing services platform.
Several weeks earlier the court had ordered that company to monitor external sites for links to copyrighted files uploaded to Rapidshare, a motion that led to music rights group GEMA claiming victory in the lawsuit.
Speaking after today’s decision RapidShare CEO Alexandra Zwingli wrote:
“For the first time the Hamburg Higher Regional Court has followed our line of argument on key points and has conferred legal legitimacy on our service, just as other courts have done over a considerable period of time. This is a significant result for us.”
While Rapidshare must now monitory third party site links it does not need to police all files uploaded by users, in fact Rapidshare has always been quick to remove content that it has personally found to be against copyright laws.
In the meantime Rapidshare plans to appeal Germany’s Supreme Court decision regarding third party site monitoring.
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James Johnson James is a new media professional with more than half a decade worth of experience in the online writing space. He currently serves as the Associate Editor of Inquisitr.com and the Editor-in-Chief of SocialNewsDaily.com. He also serves as a resident writer for Splash Press Media. In his spare time James consults businesses regarding SEO and Content Development.
