A German court has ruled that Rapidshare.com isn’t doing enough to combat piracy and that its filters are ineffective. The court decision of the Hamburg district court, which was published a few days ago, states that Rapidshare has to become active against copyright infringements as soon as rights holders make the companny aware of them - a rule that is somewhat similar to the DMCA in the United States.
However, Rapidshare has to do a lot more than just take down infringing content. The company also has to “proactively check content before publishing it” if there have been similar infringements in the past. Rapidshare has to log and check IP numbers of potential infringers as well, according to the court decision.
Rapidshare has been using a MD5 Hash filter to prevent the upload of previously removed material, and it told the court that it it has six employees working full time to remove infringing content. The Hamburg court however ruled that this was not sufficient because infringers would only have to change a few bytes of a file in order to circumvent the filter.
Th court also ruled that Rapidshare cannot argue that it is impossible to stay in business if it would have to check every single file. “A business model that doesn’t use common methods of prevention cannot claim the protection of the law”, the decision reads.
(via gulli)
I was intrigued by Governor Palin’s hint in her ABC interview that her experience was comparable to other VPs across history. I was surprised by how incorrect she was.
Here’s a mp4 version.
Here’s the version at blip.tv.
Here’s a version at the Internet Archives.
The ever-fantastic Sunlight Foundation has a launched a Public Markup of the Financial Industry Bailout Bill. Check it out here.
“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
By now, many sites have all reported that BitTorrent has raised another round of funding, this time totaling $17 million and putting their total raised to date close to $50 million. You really have to wonder what these VCs are…
There is one major problem on Wall Street, that until solved, will result in meltown after meltdown in future years. I can’t say if the meltdown monkey will hit every 2,3, 5 or 10 years. But I can say with certainty that it will happen again. Why ?
…
Cablevision, which recently claimed a legal victory when a court ruled that its network DVR does not infringe on copyright, says it will be taking the service to market “early next year,” reports Light Reading. Speaking at a Merrill Lynch Conferenc…
38 Second dramatization of the end of the world, scheduled for sometime Wednesday
We noted in a previous post that some people are worried that when they turn on the Large Hadron Collider it will create a black hole that will turn the earth into a “shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter” a…
