The Higher Regional Court of Dusseldorf has rejected film distributor Capelight Pictures? allegations that popular Rapidshare had not undertaken "all reasonable measures" to stop the dissemination of its name through web host?s network. Capelight Pictures, known for peddling such motion picture marvels as Cherrybomb, Dood Eind and Fanboy, had initially won an injunction against Rapidshare but now has been reversed by the higher court. The court ruling simply implies that Rapidshare took reasonable measures to prevent dissemination of the distributor?s name. Rapidshare had contended that it was not possible to use a word filter to remove files on its services due to English file descriptors.

The Court supported Rapidshare?s claims that use of such filer would "hinder the lawful saving of private copies". The move comes in the wake of the German laws that enable peoples to store private copies of copyrighted works. Thus, deletion of private copies could have backfired on Rapidshare.

Rapidshare's CEO Christan Schmid, appeared very happy after the verdict and offered up some stern words. "Copyright holders should therefore think very carefully in future about whether they wouldn't prefer to save themselves some time and above all the expense of suing RapidShare for something for which the company cannot be held liable." Rapidshare?s legal victory has set an example for the web hosting industry as a whole. Web hosts are likely to suffer massive costs if they are asked to enforce tighter checks on the content on their networks. Market gurus believe that the burden of hefty costs will be passed on to end users in such scenario.

Source: USANewsWeek
DeathKnell Reviewed by DeathKnell on . Court Reverses Rapidshare File Sharing Verdict The Higher Regional Court of Dusseldorf has rejected film distributor Capelight Pictures? allegations that popular Rapidshare had not undertaken "all reasonable measures" to stop the dissemination of its name through web host?s network. Capelight Pictures, known for peddling such motion picture marvels as Cherrybomb, Dood Eind and Fanboy, had initially won an injunction against Rapidshare but now has been reversed by the higher court. The court ruling simply implies that Rapidshare took Rating: 5