It looks like a few content owners have woken up to another of the underground file streams in use around the globe.
http://www.p2p-blog.com/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 company 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.
This is not going to work even with the best will in the world, as long as you offer a profit making business that is based on the free uploading of files and paid downloading, your going to be held liable for those files regardless of whether you know whats in them or not because you are seen in law to profit from any infringement that takes place.
I would suggest for the future of their company they transition to only allowing clearly identified users to upload and pass the buck back to them if they upload such material as the torrent sites could do if they got squeezed hard enough, the main point here is you cant be seen to profit from others illegal activities.
