14 DAY TRIAL // You can't win if you fight them, you can't win if you join them, it seems, if you're a cyberlocker. MegaUpload was destroyed by the entertainment industry quite recently for its alleged illegal behavior. RapidShare on the other hand has been doing quite a lot to get the copyright corporations off its back, somewhat successfully.
But despite being very pro-active in policing its site for infringing material, it's still finding itself in trouble as a German court ordered it to start filtering all uploaded content for stuff that may be infringing.
Of course, it's not the first time we've heard this and RapidShare is not the first site ordered to do so.
That's precisely why everyone knows it can't be done, not without nuking your entire business and not because you won't be able to "profit" off of infringing content but because the costs and logistics would prevent you from ever turning a profit.
Still, a German court upheld three different decisions by lower courts and said that RapidShare has to monitor all uploads and look for the content belonging to the plaintiffs, in this case a couple of book publishers and GEMA, the local music rights group, the same one that is blocking YouTube music videos in the country.
The written verdict has not been made public yet. RapidShare is still considering its options and said it awaits the entire verdict before any decision. Most likely, it will appeal the decision, so the case will drag on for longer.
What's interesting, as TorrentFreak points out, is that the ruling seems to contradict a very recent one by the European Court of Justice. It said that sites that host user content can't be forced to monitor and filter content as it is uploaded since it would be a privacy violation.
This is the same thing MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom said about a filtering system for the site, that it would have contradicted with US privacy laws.