Senator Film Verleih vs Rapidshare

Another fighter for copyright rights, Senator Film Verleih, has sued Rapidshare for allegedly distributing the film Reader through the Internet. The case is considered in the Hamburg State Court.



Before this, Senator Film Verleih demanded from Rapidshare’s management to come up with an open obligation to no longer place the film for download on its server, but was refused. Representatives of Rapidshare say they do not violate copyright.



Unlike torrents on Rapidshare can not search for keywords. The user can download the data, in a particular case the film “Reader”, only if another user who posted the movie on the site sends him a direct link to the file.

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Thus, the copyright is violated by the user who makes a public link to the movie. As for the actual download of data to Rapidshare, it is completely legal, unless the copyright holder specifically states that they can be stored exclusively on any one carrier.



To prevent users from uploading data to Rapidshare, as noted by the owners of the service, it is possible only if it is known in advance that this is a violation of someone’s rights. Meanwhile, in Germany, the rules for checking data on “legality” before loading are still not clearly defined.



For their part, the plaintiffs point out that Rapidshare is not doing enough to prevent the illegal downloading of copyrighted data. In particular, by typing in the Google search engine the name of the movie along with the word “Rapidshare”, the user can often find a direct link to the file of interest placed on the server.



What will end the next trial with Rapidshshare find out soon.