It may well mean a temporary reprise of german FREE hosting services - when you don't collect enough details to identify the person uploading it's hard to place the blame... just think if this was a real life situation: someone leases a shop to a trader and the trader sells illegal goods, it is the trader who is to blame, and if the trader runs then police can be provided with the payment details of the trader which can be used to trace him/her.
On the other hand if there's a carboot sale with minimal registration details and it's discovered that a large number of people are selling illegal goods there's a good chance the whole thing'll be closed down because you can't figure out who the people are.*

*Yes you'd get the place stormed with police irl, but imagine if this carboot sale was protected by strict privacy laws and as such police weren't allowed to see who was selling what to whom at any given time without a court order...

Yes this might feasibly mean the end to free hosting as we know it, and I for one hope it does - it's not fair that copyright laws should be treated with such disregard and without punishment, and this is a much fairer way to go about things than the insane suing that's going on

edit: you wouldn't find any other business where people are so flagrantly allowed to break the law and the law protecting those who break it. If any other business provided such obvious means to do break the law then there'd be very strict regulations on them at the very least, and they'd have to have some strong plan of how to prevent the illegal activity - eg requiring ID for age in bars

Jez, it's not just the free hosting that will end, also the paid hosting ; I pay a decent amount of money to store my files and websites at Servage and Wiktel, and if they have to comply to this ruling, they will shut down too, or charge me tenfold.
I'm glad Wiktel is in the US (safe harbor) and Servage is in Denmark....

The Notice-Take Down approach works good enough for the rest of the world, and the consequences of this ruling are just absurd....
I agree that Rapidshare's business model is most likely based on the sole intention of people exchanging copyrighted material - that's why most people know Rapidshare. But, I think that they truly deserve the same protection as the national post office. You cannot bring the post to court because they have delivered a copied CD by mail, or for having delivered an anthrax letter.
Instead, they have to take the sender to court, or the recipient for ordering the stolen CD, and that's the way it should be, also online.

What's the next step? Do ISP's in Germany have to prescreen each IP packet that's sent over their network to check for possible copyright infringement (or other illegal activities) ? Besides the fact that this is simply impossible (both technically as well as procedurally and legally), it would be an absurd situation.

I disagree with comparing rapidshare to post office - rapidshare hold a file for loads of people to download, maybe the bittorrent model or messengers where its p2p you could consider 'the post office' but not rapidshare or file hosts.

But my point was it almost certainly will not extend to paid hosting for the simple reason that the person doing it in paid hosting can be traced - payment details. and thus it will be the last traceable person in the link held to account - in this case it's rapidshare, in 'normal' hosting it's the site owner - such as you for oxle rather than wiktel, me for jezchat rather than kiwihosting...

No Jez, I upload something to Wiktel's server, and they host it ; they have the same role as Rapidshare ; they host the possibly infringing file.
An important thing to realize is that me (as a user) personally being liable does not mean them being not liable for the damages...

Rapidshare in fact is a normal paid hosting provider ; while their free accounts are limited, their Premium accounts are much more like a normal hosting package. It includes 500GB of personal webspace for example, just as Servage does.

maybe if people didn't infringe copyright them we wouldn't be in this state in the first place

Man this is outrageous.... 
Don't you understand this? This has nothing to do with copyright infringement ; this has only one reason: the content owners want to control ALL content, even the one they don't own. Soon you won't be able to put your own holiday flicks online because not a single hosting company out there is commercially able to provide that, because they have to prescreen every flick that gets uploaded for copyright infrigements....just as with that home-flick on YouTube were a 4 year old kid dances to 20 seconds a Prince song...taken down because Prince didn't approve of it....that it was only a 20 second citation didn't seem to matter.

Another thing mr HuwR - does this same logic apply to other extreme measures, like for instance:
- having the mail open every letter/package, to check for copyrighted texts or photos?
- having the police check every car-radio of every vehicle on the M1 to see if there's copyrighted CD's in it?
- your landlord checking your house every day to see you don't let in any mischievous people ?
- your phone company checking who you're calling and what for, to see if you're not doing anything illegal ?

Come on...this is the so-called recording industry telling us what we can and cannot do...it's absurd.

Hmmm.....Huw, I think your statement in general is true, however, I certainly do not think this approach is reasonable.
Go after the lawbreakers, not the enablers. The enabler - in this case Rapidshare - is just the man in the middle and how it's service is being used is not under the control of Rapidshare, just as with the mail. If - and I say if - one can prove that Rapidshare's business model solely relies on the hosting of copyright infringing data (esp. movies and music), Rapidshare itself can be fined (and the owners put in jail).
If I sent a package of weed to the UK via UPS, UPS isn't liable, and everyone would think it would be outrageous to see a judge decide differently.
Within no time every single mail-company would simply stop their service, as - just as with Rapidshare - a commercial mail company can not comply to such a ruling without hiring thousands and thousands and thousands of extra people ánd by invading the privacy of the people using the mail.
And, yes, you would most likely not see such extreme measures being taken if everyone was a saint, and no one infringed (is that even a verb by the way??) copyrights....

Even if a statement such as the one your using is true in general, it does not make every method of preventing it a good and effective method.
Without terrorists, there would be no terrorism, right? So, why not execute inprison everyone who could potentially become a terrorists? It sure works, and it keeps the bad guys away.
Without cars and alcholic beverages, there would be no drink&drive accidents, right? So, why not ban alcohol for everyone with a drivers license....this definitely works!
Both measures, and this one, are just too much and that's why the only place where you see this kind of legislation is Germany....the land of the extremes.

I think it is you who is missing the point (guestuser), the hosting companies will be forced to shut down because they can't afford the cost of policing morons who upload pirated or copyrighted material that they do not own the copyright for, so don't berate me for misunderstanding.


the fact is plain and simple of people did not rip off other peoples copyrighted material then this situation would not exist period.

I am a lot more aware than you think of how difficult it is to protect your copyright even when your product is given away for free.

you can not claim non responsibility if you are providing the webspace for some one to upload pirated material, it is exactly the same as fencing(selling) stolen property, that is also illegal.

So you agree with shutting down your own hosting company, because you as a hostingprovider are - as you say it yourself - fencing stolen property if you do not check every file being stored on the webspace you provide?
You're almost saying "Guilty as not charged yet".....and I sure don't hope you actually mean that.
I truly am convinced that you as a hostingprovider (and me in terms of providing http://storage.oxle.com) should not be held liable in that way and that the role of hosting provider is very much comparable to the role of the mail.
As they used to say : don't shoot the messenger.

I am also liable for content that may be posted on a forum too, so what is the difference ?

and yes, I would shut down my hosting service if it ws not cost effective, but I do not provide that sort of intensive hosting so it is very easy for me to police what is on my servers, and I would not hesitate to remove something I thought was in violation of copyright. as a copyright holder I can't enforce my rights if I don't enforce someone elses.

every hosint account available as terms which expressly forbid you from uploading stuff that infringes someones copyright, so you don't have a leg to stand on or a right to complain if you do so, as a hosting provider you are responsible for ensuring your terms are adhered to, you can noy leave it up to your clients, if that was the case we wouldn't need police as there woudn't be any crime.

Marcel that will never become a reality - the idea is to try to stop the people who provide MASSIVE opportunity for copyright infringement not everyone else.The fact is that they've tried going after the offenders, and it hasn't worked because for every one who gets locked up or fined there's another 10 just discovering rapidshare and bittorrent and youtube*. There has to be another way.

I don't think that driving rapidshare out is any different to what would happen offline - if a merchant is selling mainly illegal goods the cops wouldn't care about the 30% that's kosher would they? I believe that normal hosts will be treated as always - inform them to take action against the site owner. if that has no effect, as in case of rapidshare then action has to be taken against the host... it's like the relatively recent laws over here that take action against the parents of kids who never turn up to school...


*Youtubes a different story cos it actually takes responsibility for its users and pays royalty fees.

Mmm, I just realized the huge difference between Rapidshare & YouTube on one side, and 'normal hosting providers' on the other side : both RapidShare and Youtube make money on people actually accessing the hosted files (as they provide this through their own pages, with their own ads on it etc).
A normal hosting company doesn't work that way, so there's no active publishing being performed.

@Huw in particular (and this is an actual technical question, not a discussion question if you know what I mean) ; how do you determine pro-actively if a) the material one of your customers puts online is subject to copyright ?
b) is actually distributed to someone else than the customer ?
c) the customer actually does or does not have the right to distribute?

I find that very hard to find out ; I have 2 users on Storage.oxle.com, who upload music. Just a couple of songs each (30 or so), and they use less than 150 MB of traffic per day. Based on the traffic and the fact that they occasionally delete a song or two and put two others online, I imagine they both use it as their own online iPod, and that they haven't spread the the URL's pointing to those files to their friends. But...I can not be sure of that....it's their "personal file storage", and if I'm not mistaking they are personally allowed to listen to the music they own (which I cannot check) wherever they want.

rule of thumb marcel, if you recognise them or if you google the lyrics and it shows to be a released song, then it's illegal. even with personal use you're at risk - because the license you purchase when you buy a cd/download a song from napster or itunes strictly prohibits the distribution of it in any way... yes it's a grey area cos in reality noone *really* cares if you make a copy on cd to listen to in the car for example but just to protect your own back you have to be wary, because it is technically illegal and when you're providing the means for it and you are aware of their actions you're really putting your own head in the noose should it be found out by the wrong person.

Indeed, it seems I am completely wrong....according to the recording industry no one is allowed to store digital music online, even in an electronic personal vault: source.

If I compare the example of storage.oxle.com to the Jamie Thomas case, the mere fact that these files are online on storage.oxle.com could cost me $277.500......twice.
It's time to shut down oxle altogether.

You just have to be careful with that area, if you take action when you notice copyrighted material is being uploaded - warn users, ban users and always remove the material in theory you should not be at risk, esp as oxle is fairly small and moderatable.

You just have to remember that the song belongs to the person who wrote it, the recording belongs to the person who recorded it or paid for the recording and all you're doing when you buy a song is paying to be allowed to play it, nothing more. the concept that you buy a cd and now the song is yours is completely false, it's no different to a game - it is your right to now play that song, as it is on the cd, to yourself. that's what you buy when you buy a song.

I check the content of directories regularly, if they contain media (songs video etc)if I know it is pirate I will remove it and contact the client, if I am unsure I will contact the clinet for verification. I have a lot of clients who host media, but they have the rights to do so.

Thanks for the reply Huw.
I will be contacting my current storage.oxle.com members by e-mail explaining them the situation, and stressing the fact that I have a responsibility to check for pirated content.
Furthermore, I will be closing registration, so that only known members of this forum can register for a storage account.
Man, I'm pretty disappointed about how this all evolves....let's hope a judge decides wisely about this, otherwise a lot of hostingproviders and people like me are f*cked....