Court orders Rapidshare to take preemptive measures against copyright infringement

I was under the impression that courts are ruled by fact and reason but it becomes apparent that some judges are not able to cope with technology and the fast changing online world. A court order issued on January 23th by the District court of Dusseldorf, Germany ordered Rapidshare to take preemptive measures against copyright infringement (article on Gema website) This does look nicely on paper but once you take a look at the practical implementation it is a (nearly) impossible task.

The court basically told Rapidshare to make a distinction between copyrighted and free files on their servers. This would mean that Rapidhshare has to have a master list of all copyrighted files, be it music, film, documents and even dlls to be able to make a decision. Documents, films and music have to be played to be sure that it is indeed copyrighted material because a name could imply that it is but nothings for sure until you checked the file manually.

A simple name comparison is not enough to determine if a file is infringing copyright. Not all files are named properly as well, some are zipped and contain many files, some are secured with a password. How is Rapidshare going to check on all of these files ? They can’t. It is simply impossible to follow the courts order and the judges seem to have taken this into account by saying that Rapidshare would have to follow this order even if it would mean that they had to cease offering it at all.

The order will most likely be appealed and we have seen other outcomes from regional courts that basically said that Rapidshare did not have to take preemptive measures.

Rapidshare will continue operating for now and it could very well take a few years until a final decision has been made by the Federal Court. The solution if the court would rule in favor of the copyright holders would be to either stop the service or move to another country like those DVD copy producers did when German courts hit hard on them.