Court orders RapidShare to stop facilitating the distribution of book titles

Swiss ‘cyberlocker’ RapidShare has received an injunction from the court of Hamburg to host a list of 148 book titles. The injunction entails that the company needs to pro-actively filter the uploading behaviour of its users on the pains of a 250.000-euro fine or even a jail sentence for the admins.

Six publishers filed a joined lawsuit against RapidShare to order the cyberlocker to prevent the uploading and distribution of 148 book titles, mainly textbooks. The publishers, Freeman & Worth, Macmillan, Cengage Learning, Pearson, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Bedford, and Elsevier together hold a large part of the market for textbooks.

Even if digital copies manage to slip through RapidShare’s filter, the company remains liable, urging RapidShare to take good care its monitoring efforts are effective.

Tom Allen, president of the Association for American Publishers, said in a statement on Torrentfreak: “ This ruling is an important step forward. Not only does it affirm that file-sharing copyrighted content without permission is against the law, but it attaches a hefty financial punishment to the host, in this case RapidShare, for noncompliance. Consider this a shot across the bow for others who attempt to profit from the theft of copyrighted works online.”

25 February 2010