Judge: Rapidshare ‘sometimes’ liable for piracy

The German Supreme Court has ruled that file sharing service Rapidshare is responsible for copyright infringement in some cases. Rapidshare should take ‘reasonable precautions’ to prevent piracy.

Game-maker Atari had filed a lawsuit against Rapidshare, with the former claiming that the file-sharing service unlawfully provided access to his game Alone In The Dark. However, the court is not of the opinion that Rapidshare bears full responsibility for this and states that ‘reasonable technical and economic measures’ must be taken to prevent piracy, without harming Rapidshare’s business model. This shows that a file sharing service cannot automatically be held responsible if users offer copyrighted material, but that this depends on the measures taken.

The court ruled that Rapidshare must actively monitor, in order to detect copyrighted material. This should include looking for external sites that link to Rapidshare content. The file sharing service could then remove this content from its servers. Rapidshare had previously indicated that it already has such technology.

It is not clear whether Rapidshare meets the requirements of ‘reasonableness’ that the German Supreme Court speaks of with the current technological measures. The court states that it does not have sufficient information to rule on this, so that the court in Düsseldorf must rule on this; there Atari had initially filed his lawsuit against Rapidshare.

Earlier, the court in Hamburg had ruled in a lawsuit filed by the German copyright organization GEMA and book publishers De Gruyter and Campus that Rapidshare is fully liable for copyright infringement of its users. According to this judge, Rapidshare must prevent music from GEMA members and books from the publishers from being offered any longer, whereby the current measures are insufficient. The German Supreme Court therefore nuances this position somewhat. However, it remains unclear whether Rapidshare should do more to prevent piracy.