Atari Loses Copyright Suit Against RapidShare 198
dotarray writes "Online copyright lawsuits aren't all about music. Video game publisher Atari Europe recently became concerned that copies of its game Alone in the Dark were floating around one-click file-hosting service RapidShare, so it took the hosting company to court. While they won the initial case, the decision was overturned on appeal, finding that RapidShare is doing nothing wrong."
torrent (Score:4, Insightful)
They did nothing wrong hosting a full game, while other site hosting torrents are?
Re:torrent (Score:5, Informative)
they follow the DMCA, they remove things when people report stuff to them.
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Then they allow the exact same file to be uploaded again with a slightly different filename.
Gone is AloneInTheDark_87A81B2717B.zip, say hello to AloneInTheDark_87A81B2717C.zip
And they don't provide any means for copyright holders to prevent this.
Rapidshare may be legally right, morally they are very wrong.
Re:torrent (Score:5, Insightful)
And you suppose they should just ban everything with the text "AloneInTheDark" in the name, as if nobody can upload some some screenshots or some machinima movie or some game mod or some fan related stuff for Alone In The Dark... Just look up Youtube to see how many videos are for "Alone in the dark", only 5040 videos.
The reality is the name of the file has nothing to do with the content... and if you enforce something like this, soon you'll find files called a.rar, a.r01 and so on, and copyright owners won't even find the pirated stuff because people posting pirated content will just type the description, do a print screen and post the picture with the details instead of text. And how is that going to help anyone?
Cryptic names for pirated stuff (Score:2)
(...) and if you enforce something like this, soon you'll find files called a.rar, a.r01 and so on, and copyright owners won't even find the pirated stuff because people posting pirated content will just type the description, do a print screen and post the picture with the details instead of text. And how is that going to help anyone?
Some groups have been doing this for some time now, generally using the first letters of the name. For this it might be something along the lines of al.int.d.r01.
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Exactly. And since an archive can easily contain any sort of salt, hash values can't help either. Even individual and personal vetting by a human being won't work. Someone will just XOR the material with something else and publish the key separately.
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Doesn't even need a password. Just include a variable length file of random contents in the archive.
The most secure bet is just to password protect the archive with WinRAR, have the password available in the notes (this can be easily changed around so an automatic scanner can't pick up the password, similar to how /. obfuscates E-mail addresses), and call it done.
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Easy to counter:
Zip up a rar/zip/7z.
Zip up a multipart file.
Zip up an encrypted file.
Zip up a truecrypt volume.
Etc.
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So... you're saying store rar files with a jpeg header will break your check methods (which is done all the time). So if all they do is change the image every time, the checksum changes on the file.
You could store rars in a rar, and password the rars inside the main rar. The only way they can check for that is to decompress the rar, and they can't do that if the rar is split over several pieces, and then they have to figure out what pieces on that server make up the rar. While technically possible, not p
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Already been done. The JPEG format permits any amount of garbage after the end-of-data marker. The ZIP format permits any amount of garbage at the beginning of the file. Cat a JPEG and a ZIP together, and you've got a file that's both a valid JPEG and a valid ZIP.
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No, they should calculate a checksum for the infringing file
They DO.
This would still not prevent people from uploading the file again if they really want to, but they would have to modify it in some way (for example package it into a new zip file) which is a lot more work than just uploading it unchanged.
Yes, that is correct, except the part about it being “a lot more work”.
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[...] they would have to modify it in some way (for example package it into a new zip file) which is a lot more work than just uploading it unchanged.
Yeah, which is so much more work that, um, every half-way sane upload application automates this process. Rapidshare and other hosters already do compare hashes. You are not the first bright fellow to realise that filtering file names is retarded.
Re:torrent (Score:5, Insightful)
So not only must Rapidshare know the name of every film, book and video game in existence (and in copyright) but they also have to filter anything that sounds even vaguely like them, has characters added, uses "l33t" spelling, etc. so that they don't accidentally host them? And not only that, but they have to go by the filename, so if I upload 2.7 millions movie clips all called "Aliens", they have to take every single one of them off despite not a single one of them actually having any copyrighted material in them?
Yes, it's obvious that it's easy to circumvent. It's also immediately obvious that, even if a court orders it, they can't *stop* that no matter how many people they hire, checks they make, or copyright holders they work with. Thus it's a pointless exercise to try to pretend they can. All they NEED to do is react to reports of copyright infringement, the same as anyone else. If you don't react, you are basically hindering copyright holders from stamping out infringement. If you DO react, you're not getting in their way even if you do end up inadvertantly hosting some of their content - but you can at least say "it wasn't us, this guy gave us that file" and so trace it back to an individual that CAN be prosecuted (and refusing to identify users etc. will get you into the same trouble with courts as not taking off the files when asked to by a validated copyright holder).
Additionally, I'm a copyright holder. I have written software, written books, drawn images, filmed videos and all manner of things. Thus if I ask, they have to take stuff down if I believe it's mine. That means they have to have some kinds of primitive checks to ensure I *am* a valid copyright owner and have NOT given my permission (there are some genuine software authors that willingly use RapidShare to save their bandwidth, for example), even for the most obscure and nonsensical things that get uploaded to their service. So even investigating every copyright infringement *report* is a huge burden, let alone every *potential* copyright infringement (which basically means performing those checks for EVERY file).
RapidShare might be a hive of illegal content, but when reported it gets removed. So is eBay a hive of illegal content, but when you report it, it gets removed - whether that's because you're selling Nazi memorabilia in France, a baby, or just unlicensed software. It's RIDICULOUS to expect a host to pre-screen absolutely everything they put onto a download website or even a busy auction site. (Almost) Every court in the world recognises that and only expects them to co-operate fully when things ARE reported.
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So... how exactly does YouTube handle copyrights in video's? They don't do a perfect job, but they manage.
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That argument, "it is to hard!" is so damn silly. Rapidshare have at their disposal this new thing called computers and technology. No, they can't manually check every file that is uploaded, but they can develop heuristic methods [wikipedia.org] to flag the content that is most likely warez and then manually remove that.
For example, if a file gets more than 100 downloads per hour, it is most likely some copyrighted game or movie. If most of the referers who downloads the file comes from www.warezforum.com, then the file is
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well, they read the geoshitties memo and decided that it wasn't a good policy to make popular content automatically disappear.
it's just not good business.
also your part has a 'manually remove that'. of course, you might understand that a lot of stuff put on rapidshare is in encrypted zips and the like.
you'd like to put your imagination against all the worlds 15 year olds? your heuristic methods would come up with a lot of gray area positives too. unless you just go with the popular=illegal because otherwise
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Those dirt simple heuristic methods took you five minutes to think of because they'd take five seconds for the warez community to skew into uselessness. Is a file getting more than 100 downloads an hour? What if they just upload 100 versions of the file and iterate through the link URLs they display on their sites - heuristic skewed. Most of the referers come from warez forums? Host a link on the warez site to a legitimate site and put the download link there, or have your community spend a little time clic
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The second you filter, you become responsible for what passing through the filter. Ask ISP's in restrictive countries and almost any modern legal system. If you claim to have a "safe web filter" and then someone gets a dodgy site from it, you are deemed partly responsible because "why didn't your filter catch it"? I work in schools, so I know this problem well. This is why ISP's don't WANT to filter stuff, or people don't WANT to run cybercafes in restrictive countries, or why wikipedia DOESN'T moderate
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The second you filter, you become responsible for what passing through the filter. Ask ISP's in restrictive countries and almost any modern legal system.
Utter rubbish. That is not how the law works at all. Google has a safe-search feature, that doesn't mean someone can sue them for millions when something slips through that filter. Every ISP, torrent and hosting site filters out child porn and they are very good at it. TPB which prides themselves in hosting pirated content despite takedown letters, takes down child porn torrens within minutes of their uploading.
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Yes becasue if it were really that simple, don't you think they would be doing it already?
No they wouldn't because they are making money on people sharing pirated material! People are supposed to want to download files from them, get pissed that "all their download slots are busy" and pay for premium accounts.
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1 kid can probably do several hundred files a day if you pushed them (you say yourself, only 150 unique users). We're talking several MILLION a day. That means 1000 kids, probably more than the entire RapidShare workforce, just to do a simple screen, not even a legally-binding one. Automated, on 24-hour shifts, with human-delays in between every upload.
A publisher is putting money to put that content into presses and sell it on. RapidShare doesn't. It also has a run of several million in their entire l
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lovely idea.
lets force every web host to only allow content in formats they themselves have the ability to read?
encrypted file? Lets assume guilty until proven innocent! wipe it!
large binary file we don't recognise? Lets assume guilty until proven innocent! wipe it!
Something in a language we don't know? Lets assume guilty until proven innocent! wipe it!
Something in a format we can't read? Lets assume guilty until proven innocent! wipe it!
and we can completely and utterly forget any form of privacy, webmail
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The DMCA put the "policing" responsibility on the copyright holders, who are, after all, the ultimate beneficiaries of the copyright anyway. So no, they shouldn't be forcing unrelated third parties to do it for them.
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They're not unrelated as in "they had nothing to do with it". YouTube undoubtedly, undeniably had ad income from pirated clips, the only question is how geared it is towards piracy. I mean, you can argue the hardware store profited from the sale of a crowbar too. The Betamax case was fairly clear for a piece of hardware they had no knowledge of how people used, namely at "substantial non-infringing uses".
But what about a service? Much tougher, I mean YouTube in theory knows every clip they serve. And someti
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I certainly see where you're coming from, but I think one could argue YouTube has "substantial non-infringing uses". Aside from copyright holders putting major stuff up themselves to promote it, there are also an awful lot of self-made videos on YouTube. There are people holding entire conversations and debates in a video format, with points and counterpoints stretching over several responses, from people who are relatively well-known to the guy down the street. I'd say that's a pretty substantial legitimat
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Then they allow the exact same file to be uploaded again with a slightly different filename.
Gone is AloneInTheDark_87A81B2717B.zip, say hello to AloneInTheDark_87A81B2717C.zip
And they don't provide any means for copyright holders to prevent this.
Rapidshare may be legally right, morally they are very wrong.
I can only laugh at your moral(e) values.
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once someone tells them they're hosting copyrighted content they take it down.
Should they be rooting through my files, reading my documents and watching my home videos just to try to decide if it's copyrighted content (which they still won't know) before someone reports it?
never mind encrypted files.
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RapidShare is knowingly hosting illegal downloads
No, they're not. They have no idea if a specific file is legal or not until the owner tells them, and then they remove it.
What exactly is immoral? Having a file hosting service at all?
Morality (Score:2)
Rapidshare may be legally right, morally they are very wrong.
A law that extends copyright for decades after the author's death is immoral. Extending copyrights decades after a work was created is immoral.
So, should we follow the law or should we try to be moral?
If the law had any relation to morality it would follow the constitutional mandate that copyrights are for the authors and last for a limited time. They are not for a corporation to extend indefinitely long after the original term expired and the author died.
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>>>morally they are very wrong.
Alone in the Dark is over 14 years old. (If I recall correctly.) It should be in the public domain anyway. "Morality" tells me that no company should have a permanent monopoly on art. Imagine if the Venus de Milo or Mona Lisa were still copyrighted, such that nobody could reproduce them, not even in textbooks. We cannot lock-up our culture like that.
Also RapidShare isn't really hosting the file. They are merely a man-in-the-middle providing addresses between Me
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>>>Alone in the Dark is over 14 years old.
>>>(If I recall correctly.)
Okay I double-checked. AitD was first published in 1992, so it really should be in public domain by now, per the original Copyright Act of 1790. Ditto parts 2,3 and the spinoff Jack in the Dark.
Like I said in my previous post I consider it immoral for megacorps to lock-up our culture indefinitely & make it non-copyable. Imagine if nobody ever saw the Mona Lisa because some corporation still held the copyright and r
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Anon. Coward writes:
>>>Please stop posting.
>>>Please, let your mama double-checks for you.
Why do Anonymous Cowards have shit for brains? The article says "Alone in the Dark" which is part 1, not 5. RTFA. LINK: and QUOTE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alone_in_the_dark [wikipedia.org] "Alone in the Dark, the original game in the series, was developed by Infogrames [Atari] and released for PC in 1992....."
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>>>The article does not say that
You're right. The article does NOT say it is Alone in the Dark Part 5 or AITD: Near Death Investigation. (If you think it does, then show it to me.) It simply says "Alone in the Dark" and the ONLY game that ever received that title, without numbers or subtitles, is the original. It's just like saying "Star Trek". That refers to the original, not any of the sequels. If the sequel was intended, then it would read Star Trek TNG or Star Trek DS9 not just Star Trek.
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Rapidshare may be legally right, morally they are very wrong.
Like Obiwan said to Luke, that depends on your point of view.
Some people think homosexuality is immoral, some think that drinking is immoral, and hell, my great aunt told my grandmother that she was going to hell because she wore pants. Morality depends on your viewpoint.
There are people who think there should be no such thing as copyright, there are people who have bought a license to the game but scratched the CD, there are people who don't want
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So you'd like Atari to be able to veto any filename that contained those words? Then Microsoft would veto anything that contained, say "Windows", Word", "Bob".....
I've never heard of Atari's "Alone in the dark", what if I used that as the title of a video I made? It'd be deleted;. I'd b
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Re:torrent (Score:4, Insightful)
RapidShare is not just sharing files, it's making money off content that is mostly illegal. This is not a service that wants to "share" anything, in fact they try to push you into paying by making the "sharing" part next to impossible for free. Remove all illegal content from RapidShare, and they'll be out of business very quickly.
To me, that makes RapidShare, and similar services catering primarily to illegal files, immoral.
I think you'll find a pretty large amount of Slashdotters believe that filesharing copyrighted content for profit IS immoral.
Re:torrent (Score:5, Insightful)
But rapidshare isn't the one sharing the material. They don't even enable searching for files. They just provide storage and downloads of files someone else uploads and then tells people about.
Would you consider google evil for enabling the sharing of files through email? Or ISPs evil for providing their customers upstream bandwidth?
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If your whole business model collapses when you remove all the illegal material, then you are probably being immoral. They could easily implement a check on what is uploaded that would block files that already have been flagged.
If you removed all the illegal files from all of the Internet, google would still be viable and so would ISPs...so I don't think you are really countering his point.
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If your whole business model collapses when you remove all the illegal material, then you are probably being immoral.
Illegal is not the same as immoral.
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As Czar of the Intarwebs, on this day I declare that the above conceptual logical fallacy described in quotation above shall henceforth be known as a HungryHobo,
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Who's more immoral, the guy who uses government power to get himself paid in perpetuity for a days work, or the guy who helps others get around that?
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Who's more immoral, the guy who uses government power to get himself paid in perpetuity for a days work, or the guy who helps others get around that?
I don't know, which one rapes babies? The question is not about who, but about which act is less moral. The most important character in the discussion has been conveniently omitted: the downloader, who has enough money to buy a computer and pay for Internet access, but greedily takes the products of other's labor without paying - that would be the more immoral act. Neither of the other characters has necessarily done anything immoral.
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I'm ambivalent.
I have a tough time with the idea that I'm being immoral when I watch something that someone else tells me that I don't have the right to watch because I haven't paid them.
Is it stealing when you "take" something that does not deny its utility to another person? One could argue that by not paying, I'm denying it's creator the utility of the money that I should have paid, but that could be said of anything. In not buying a new t-shirt I'm denying the vendor the utility of the money that I didn
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The most important character in the discussion has been conveniently omitted: the downloader, who has enough money to buy a computer and pay for Internet access,
Or maybe his parents or relatives bought it for him, or the person is a teen living at home using a family computer and parentally paid-for internet? Your dichotomy is too simplistic.
There is no false dichotomy since neither I nor the poster to whom I responded suggested that the acts involved represented an exhaustive listing. The discussion is correctly focused on acts, not individuals.
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This is not a service that wants to "share" anything, in fact they try to push you into paying by making the "sharing" part next to impossible for free.
They host big files. Getting one ad impression in before people eat 100 MB of bandwidth doesn't cover the costs, everybody understands that. Well, everybody except you. That's a truth no matter whether the files they're sharing are legal or not, even YouTube streaming 100 MB of video has a much, much higher ads/profile value for advertizers. And even they struggled to manage costs early on.
Rapidshare doesn't target illegal files. They've steered very clear of any behavior on their part to encourage piracy.
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Obligatory Jack "Technophobe" Valenti quote about boston strangler and VCR here, perhaps?
Or would the old "buggy whip manufacturers vs modern automobile" bit be more appropriate?
Plenty of companies still make money selling games. Plenty of people still make money creating them. And then there are companies that seem to think coasting on old successes and re-releasing the same old tired game for umpteen platforms is their "model."
For that matter, plenty of bands manage to make money playing music - the Dave
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"rap top 40, let's shoot cops", "hip-hop top 40, let's pimp hos"
Is there really a difference between these two? I suppose hip-hop is bad singing that kinda matches the music and rap is speaking to a beat in a way that rhymes?
Re:torrent (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sure, but it's only the for-profit part I object to. I believe software should be free, no matter what it cost to develop, but I don't find it ok that someone would charge for someone ELSE'S software.
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ISP are not just transmitting data, they are making money off data that is illegal.
PC makers are not just running code, they are making money off code that is illegal.
XXX is not just doing YYY, they are making money off ZZZ that is illegal.
Maybe the electric company, the water company, the food industry, etc.. are all complicit because they enable people to do illegal things.
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The same thing that makes it "immoral" to use GPL code in a for-profit proprietary application. Or at least that's what is being pushed by the open source people.
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arrogant childish pricks who think the world owes them free entertainment.
They can go fuck themselevs like the ignorant dumbass scum they are
I would agree with these descriptions as descriptions of you with a comment like that, but most slashdotters? hardly...
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I would even add the response that torrent sites don't host the full game, just a link to the person who is hosting the whole game.
Unfortunately, the GP posted anon, so why bother to respond directly to him :)
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They didn't host the game, in full or part. They hosted a link to it.
contrast with pirateBay (Score:1)
RapidShare, hosts (unknowingly) copyright content, not guilty
PirateBay, doesn't host (knowingly) copyright content, guilty
granted, different jurisdictions
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Rapidshare actually made some effort to prevent distribution.
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Except that in the jurisdiction in which The Pirate Bay operates there is no legal way to demand that you remove a link to copyrighted material that you do not yourself host. That's a USA law and not found in most other places.
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Awe..... pity those poor Corporations with their billion-dollar capital and millions in annual revenue, while they layoff programmers who did nothing wrong (except they are unneeded human cattle) (and Indian,Chinese programmers are cheaper). Ahh poor little baby megacorps. Ahhh.
Bullshit. I don't give a fuck if movies/games the Megacorps make get downloaded. They will STILL find a way to make money, even if it's only through theater tickets and Walmart DVD sales. I think they will survive. '
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>>>If you do have a business that exists solely because people are using it to break the law then don't expect it to last.
The New York, Boston, and Las Vegas Mafia disagree
;-)
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But TPB didn't HOST the files. They just helped people find them.
Re:contrast with pirateBay (Score:4, Insightful)
No.
Rapidshare hosts (unknowingly) copyrighted content, not guilty.
PirateBay does not host any copyrighted content, guilty.
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Yea, you should completely ignore intent when thinking about these sorts of things.
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No.
Rapidshare hosts (unknowingly) copyrighted content, not guilty.
PirateBay does not host any copyrighted content, guilty.
I guess we all get your point however as an advice on wording: nothing in the world is non copy righted
There might be stuff you can legally copy and distribute. But that stuff does not have no copy right.
If no other rule or law applies, the copyright is always by the creator of a work. This posting e.g. including the quotation of my parent poster, is copyrighted by ME. I simply dont get
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RapidShare hosts content themselves, and takes down content when requested to. Atari sued them because they didn't want to keep sending takedown notices, and would prefer that RapidShare do their job for them, like YouTube currently does for copyright holders ("here, tell us what files you don't like look like, and we'll handle it automatically"). The courts sensibly said that RapidShare doesn't have to offer any more help to Atari than they already do.
PirateBay doesn't host content themselves, infringing
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they very sensibly don't respond to takedown notices
Yes they do, they have an entire page full of taunting 'haha, we're not in your jurisdiction' replies that they've sent.
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I don't believe it (Score:5, Informative)
If nothing else, this article led me to the Wikipedia page that provided the information that Alone in the Dark was remade in 2008, and that Atari is suing pretty much everyone that has anything to do with it.
It was REALLY exciting, until I realized that no North American courts are involved... A sane decision concerning copyright infringement by a U.S. Court would be really fantastic.
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From what I read playing that AITD remake alone is punishment enough, no need to rub it in with a lawsuit.
No North American courts? (Score:3)
If nothing else, this article led me to the Wikipedia page that provided the information that Alone in the Dark was remade in 2008, and that Atari is suing pretty much everyone that has anything to do with it.
It was REALLY exciting, until I realized that no North American courts are involved... A sane decision concerning copyright infringement by a U.S. Court would be really fantastic.
Apparently, while this article may have led you to the Wiki page, it didn't lead you to the article's third paragraph, which states:
This is not the first time that the file hosting company has come under the legal spotlight. Last year, the same German appeals court overturned a separate ruling against them, while a US court has also decided the company is not liable for its users behaviour.
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A sane decision concerning copyright infringement by a U.S. Court would be really seldom.
On the fringe of being an oxymoron.
One click? (Score:5, Insightful)
One click? Sure, if you mean one click to follow the posted link, then three more clicks to navigate towards the download, a few more to skip adds, then at least five more to answer questions like "Do you want the premium service? [NO], I don't want to wait, sign me up. [YES] I want it..... [extremely tiny font] just download my fucking file already [/extremely tiny font]
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Or you can use jdownloader:
http://jdownloader.org/ [jdownloader.org]
i'd be concerned about it too (Score:3)
I mean piracy of that game? I got 5 minutes into the demo, bored out of my brain and quit.
Why bother wasting the bandwidth?
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There was a demo?
The rat-thing leaping up and down at the window scared the crap out of me. And the creepy statue on the stairs.
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The name still exists. Currently Infogrames is wearing the face of that particular corpse but at least they have been around for pretty long so they're somewhat deserving of holding the name.
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Re:Well well well (Score:5, Insightful)
A file sharing service being held accountable for a file a user posted?
While they are technically hosting the file, they did not originate the content. Kinda like saying a person who picked up a second-hand pair of boots off a dead guy is an accessory to murder.
This was the right call.
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While they are technically hosting the file, they did not originate the content. Kinda like saying a person who picked up a second-hand pair of boots off a dead guy is an accessory to murder.
While I agree with the ruling, the analogy must be one of the worst I've heard. They are the tool actually executing the production of additional copies, they're closer to the knife or the gun than anything else. A better analogy might be factory workers that produce faulty and deadly brakes from a bad design. They may be the ones doing it, but they're not the ones responsible for it.
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I think a better analogy is a person puts drugs in an airport locker and holding the airport criminally responsible for possession of drugs.
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Have you ever heard of napster? They were kinda held accountable for hosting mp3 files. Now, they also indexed it which rapidshare does not, but rapid share pushes very hard for users to pay them money which is not something napster did and is one of the things that has gotten limewire into a lot of trouble. In fact, post napster, a major point (Bearshare, Kazaa and limewire at the least) has been the company knowing about the primary purpose of their service (copyright infringement) and attempting to profi
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#disagree
This is slashdot not twitter. If you know a bulletproof way to stop someone from uploading any copyrighted material to a upload site, please, enlighten us.
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if such hosting sites were to implement these features, or at least any of the latter (the first being very easily circumvented), they would soon find their visitor and premium account holder numbers dwindling and go out of business as the users flock to another hosting site which does not implement these features.
You may say "speculation! You are suggesting that such hosting sites exist only by the grace of illegal content without any data to back up these claims!" and I would say you are right;
I wouldn't. Who in their right mind would give their real name and bank account number to Rapidshare, regardless of the legality of the file? Even if you don't care about the privacy issues, it would take so much time nobody would use it.
And preventing me from uploading encrypted personal files would make me use another service.
So they could perfectly lose business even from legal distribution.
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Re:Well well well (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Rapidshare used for anything besides sharing films, music and ebooks?
Yes it is! games,pictures,porn,cracked softwares .. ..almost everything