14 DAY TRIAL // RapidShare is no different from other file sharing services that are currently threatened by all sorts of agreements and bills adopted all over the world. Because they couldn't just let Washington stomp on their business, they hired lobbyists to fight for their rights.
According to TorrentFreak, the PROTECT IP Act, or Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, introduced in May 2011, could mean the end of file sharing companies as the new law allows authorities and copyright holders to force ISPs to do as they believe necessary to stop anything that hints copyright infringement.
Because the term 'rogue site' is not properly defined in the document, companies like RapidShare fear that their business and their customers will suffer dearly.
The firm's general counsel Daniel Raimer revealed that this is their main concern and the primary reason why lobbyists were hired.
“RapidShare’s goal in Washington is the same goal it has in the marketplace: to reassure potential customers that it is doing everything in its power to eradicate abuse. The officials that RapidShare has met with appreciate the company’s openness and willingness to assert industry leadership,” he revealed.
Because he considers his operations as being a cloud hosting company, comparing it to Dropbox, he believes that many cloud storage service providers will have to suffer if the afore-mentioned term is not clearly regulated.
“It is imperative that our governments need to have serious and well-thought discussions about cloud computing services,” Raimer told TorrentFreak.
It is his belief that the fact that RapidShare takes part in the discussions can only be constructive, as they know more than anyone how the copyright business works. They never encourage piracy, but also, they wouldn't go to the limit where they'd have to break their customer's privacy in order to prevent any illegal acts.
“We have always highly respected our users’ privacy. We don’t analyze and filter files. By our terms of service we are strictly forbidden to access and open our users’ files – and we strictly abide by that.”