[Infowarrior] - Rapidshare Shares Uploader Info with Rights Holders

[Richard Forno]

Rapidshare Shares Uploader Info with Rights Holders
Written by Ernesto on April 25, 2009

http://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-shares-uploader-info-with-rights-holders-090425/

In Germany, the file-hosting service Rapidshare has handed over the  
personal details of alleged copyright infringers to several major  
record labels. The information is used to pursue legal action against  
the Rapidshare users and at least one alleged uploader saw his house  
raided.

Like many new releases, Metallica’s latest album “Death Magnetic” was  
uploaded to the popular file hosting service Rapidshare one day prior  
to its official release date last year. Since users don’t broadcast  
their IP-address or distribute files to the public directly though  
Rapidshare, it came as a surprise when the police raided the house of  
an uploader a few weeks ago.

At first it was unclear how the identity of the uploader was revealed,  
but today German news outlet Gulli said it had found out that this was  
likely to be accomplished by creative use of paragraph 101 of German  
copyright law. It turns out that several record labels are using this  
to take legal action against those who share music on Rapidshare.

Previously the paragraph was only used by rights holders to get the  
personal details of those who share copyrighted works on file-sharing  
networks. It basically enables the copyright holders to get  
“permission” from a civil judge to ask ISPs to disclose the personal  
details of a user behind a certain IP. Now, however, this also seems  
to be the case for file-hosting services such as Rapidshare, which is  
based in Germany.

This of course opens up the possibility for rights holders to go after  
a wide range of file-hosting services and potentially even BitTorrent  
sites. Indeed, everyone who now uploads a torrent file to a site  
hosted in Germany is at risk of having his personal details revealed.  
Although it will be impossible to prove that the uploader actually  
seeded the file it might be seen as assisting in copyright infringement.

Pretty much all torrent sites keep track of the IP-addresses of their  
(.torrent) uploaders, and if the rights holders can get the IP-address  
of people who upload to file-hosting services such as Rapidshare, they  
can easily extend this to BitTorrent sites hosted in Germany. A dream  
come true for copyright holders, but a nightmare for the privacy of  
Internet users.

Too bad for Metallica’s Lars Ulrich who only just started sharing  
files himself.