RapidShare Threatens Suit Over Piracy Allegations 183
Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that RapidShare, named as a contributor to digital piracy by a MarkMonitor report, has threatened to sue for defamation. 'This defamation of RapidShare as a digital piracy site is absurd and we reserve the right to take legal action against MarkMonitor,' says RapidShare in a statement. 'RapidShare is a legitimate company that offers its customers fast, simple and secure storage and management of large amounts of data via our servers.' MarkMonitor, a Web site that specializes in 'enterprise brand protection,' says in their study that the most-trafficked domains engaged in digital piracy included three sites — rapidshare.com, megavideo.com, and megaupload.com — that combined yielded 21 billion pageviews per year. RapidShare acknowledged that copyrighted files do get uploaded to its site, however 'these users are in the absolute minority compared with those who use our services to pursue perfectly legitimate interests.' RapidShare says that it does not open and view the files of its users, and contains no search function so that other users may look for content."
Perhaps Not Defamation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps Not Defamation (Score:5, Interesting)
Just in my own personal experience, I've never seen Rapidshare used for legal means.
No offense, but that probably says more about you than it does about Rapidshare.
Re:Perhaps Not Defamation (Score:4, Insightful)
Look towards the bottom at "Recent searches" how many of those look legal to you? (in case you're still under any delusions about whats hosted on rapidshare some of the titles are definitely NSFW)
http://www.filecrop.com/
http://rapidsharesearcher.com/
http://blog.egexa.com/download/
http://fileknow.com/recent
I fully support file sharing and the downfall of copyright law, but lets not lie to ourselves please.
Re:Perhaps Not Defamation (Score:5, Insightful)
This is called selection bias. People who use RS for legitimate use, share the links with the intended recipient only. The files are not searched by anonymous people throughout the web on these sites. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't search http://rapidsharesearcher.com/ [rapidsharesearcher.com] for "Presentation for 2011 shareholder meeting.pps".
You are using sites that are used by people who d/l illegal files to show that RS is used for illegal d/l. If you look into Toyota's site, you would see that most of the searches on that site are for cars made by Toyota. Ergo, most people drive Toyota!
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Well, it boils down to what statistics you use: Number/percentage of illegal files on RS or number/percentage of illegal downloads? Of course, RS would choose the former statistics and MarkMonitor would choose the latter.
Oh, and BTW, condolences to your ass. It must hurt after all the statistics you pulled out of it :)
P.S.
Do you know it's very hard to type after drinking a couple of glasses of wine. It took me forever to write this without mistakes.
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First sentence in your P.S. should end in a question mark. Snicker.
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It took me forever to write this with just one mistake.
FTFM
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it tingles a little, but I'm glad I stuck to low digit numbers ;)
It's stuck? Ouch!
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I don't think those rapidshare search queries are accurate. For example, one of the recent queries on FileCrop is "John Tesh". That's obviously not a real search. Nobody would search for that. A real search would have been prefixed with the phrase, "how to murder".
Re:Perhaps Not Defamation (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, if you see a file uploaded to RS and then it is downloaded by 10,000 users, it is probably not used for legal reasons. If, OTOH, it is downloaded by 1 other user, there is a higher chance it is used for a legal reasons.
Of course, this is not conclusive evidence: A file can be sent to a whole group via RS and still be legit, and a movie can be sent illegally from one person to another. But still, usage statistics can give you some idea as to the legality of the files without opening them.
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Since the parent was discussing how Rapidshare can know whether the files they are hosting are legal or not, my argument stands. RS does have access to the d/l logs and thus can claim that illegal d/l are a minor part of their business. As you said, MarkMonitor doesn't have access to the logs, so it better have some other evidence, or the defamation accusations will probably stick.
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I was actually interested in who the burden of proof is on: RS in calling defamation or MarkMonitor in calling RS an accessory to piracy. Any lawyers in the house ready to comment?
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Of course, this is not conclusive evidence: A file can be sent to a whole group via RS and still be legit...
Wow, have you ever heard about reading the entire comment before responding? (I can continue with the paraphrasing, but I think you get the idea).
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You mean if somebody posts a rapidshare link to 100 gigs of porn on 4chan you assume that the images are being distributed against their license? How do you know? Did you check?
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At least enough for the purpose of this discussion.
This is all a matter of perspective. We don't have any way of knowing the portion of rapidshare's traffic that is just for piracy. Of course when all we see is the piracy use but that is because legitimate uses are usually not getting passed around publicly online.
When I was programming (the non-code kind) a TV station, if we were getting content sent to us over the internet, rapidshare and their ilk were the most common distribution channel. Of course this made my inner nerd rage, but our providers liked
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"Maybe" doesn't fly in a courtroom. If Sally accuses Jim of being a kiddie fiddler, even if chances are that it's true, She'd better have proof or she's liable for slander and defamation.
Re:Perhaps Not Defamation (Score:4, Informative)
When I've downloaded custom ROMs for my phones in the last few years (which are legal when it comes to Android at least), they are often hosted on RapidShare.
I'm with AC on this one.
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It's possible that most users are doing pretty much the same thing. Legitimate:illegitimate ration is going to be near imposible to judge here.
Re:Perhaps Not Defamation (Score:4, Interesting)
I expect RapidShare are carefully selecting their statistic. For instance, the ratio of legal:illegal uploads might be very favourable to them, while the ratio for downloads isn't.
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I suspect the statistic is even simpler, what they receive takedown requests for they count as illegal and everything else is by default assumed legal. I doubt RapidShare would permit anyone to rifle through a representative selection and try to determine a real percentage, after all it's a private sharing service and they have no business trying to open them.
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Advertisements.
Other types of propaganda.
You certainly might.
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Isn't that just your perspective as it relates to USA laws and POV?
I could claim jingoism and nationalistic viewpoints as strawmen, but why?
Okay, I can accept your viewpoint that from a RIAA/MPAA perspective, but the fact that you can't accept any other POV, or Sovereign Nations POV/outlook, seems both contradictory and ludicrous at the same time.
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As someone who manages a fairly large and growing database of user-created gaming content [mapraider.com] and visits Rapidshare, Megaupload, et al. regularly to grab recent releases, I can assure you that there are quite a few GBs of perfectly legitimate content on those file hosting sites. ... at least, until the files get deleted due to download inactivity :/
There. Now you've heard about many people using it for legal means.
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Journalists for smaller publications also use it. Videos and large image archives (of an event, for example) that are difficult to send as email attachments tend to be on RapidShare and Box.net.
I loathe both as a result, as there is a tendency for the people who use it to be rather non-technical, so when I get a link from RapidShare forwarded to me from a publisher saying "I can't get this to work", it's usually some kind of oddball strange error in filetype or zero byte files all neatly named in a zip. I
Re:Perhaps Not Defamation (Score:4, Interesting)
That says more about you than about rapid share.
Are you old enough that you've seen ftp used for non-piracy purposes? Does that means we should place a tax on ftp requests that lines the pockets of the MafiAA?
There is a younger variation on RapidShare called DropBox which provide better backup & syncing functionality, but it's not as well suited for just sending a file. You better believe DropBox gets used for piracy though too. Does that mean file syncing services should be illegal?
RapidShare exists primarily because email doesn't transport large files. You cannot expect a client to install skype, gtalk, etc. In fact, you don't want all your client's on your IMs, given how easily one can offend older people on IM. Ditto for firewalls, NATs, sshd, etc. RapidShare URLs just works.
RapidShare also gets used by people trying to save bandwidth, like software developers distributing shareware & crippleware, etc. BitTorrent hasn't exactly been a bandwidth panacea for everyone, plus not everyone understands it.
If you ever left your IT bubble, you'd realize there is a whole world of small business out there that ravenously consumes simple, cheap, and fast solutions to simple problems. RapidShare has hit back hard for defamation partially because that core user base can have fairly stringent sensibilities.
But it has the word "share" in its name! (Score:2)
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Sh-Sh-Sh-Share Share the Share is the scare! The **AA loves to say that sharin' ain't fair.
Did you hear the news? No? It was of a certain ... economical distribution variety.
Sh-sh-Share Share, the Share is the Scare!
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I knew it, that is why Windows calls it Folder Sharing. Windows is EVIL! I cant wait for RIAA to sue microsoft.
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You could monitor incoming traffic to identify the referrer. It's not perfect but it is quite possible to know if a file is pirated if the link came from a forum with the thread title "Britney Spears - Greatest Hits" even if the files are in a password protected RAR file. No opening required.
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They don't. I'm sure they never said that they could. Can GMail/Yahoo/Hotmail... all guarantee that their services aren't used to transfer files in violation of copyright? Can AOL? The post office?
What they're saying is that they do not take any interest in what is being transferred. They're not like eBay, taking a cut of any transaction, they
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I think I've had one custom-drawn .ico file sent to me on RapidShare recently, so that was about 300 bytes of legitimate non-infringing content that I can vouch for!
All the time I see new links c/o Google Alerts for ripped-off copies of the TV work of a member of my family, so much so that if I see a URL fragment containing one of those as I open my alert mail I know that it's almost always going to be such. Not a force for good IMHO.
Rgds
Damon
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You are far more likely to hear of an illegal use than a legal one.
More harm than good? (Score:5, Interesting)
While I support the original intent of both copyright and patent laws, I also think both have exceeded their bounds, and need reform.
The original intent was to BOTH foster creativity and innovation while protecting both, it has currently devolved into protecting/fostering those with the most money.
Major reform is needed.
One thing I learned from my GrandDad[among many, numerous things], was that only stagnant water breeds mosquitoes. Think about the concept seriously for a moment, it is enlightening.
Maybe it seems new to you all, but it's a culmination of 100 year old insight and wisdom to me.
Sonny Bono/Disney should have been stopped in retrospect, but that's how hindsight seems to work!
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Playing devil's advocate here, but here goes:
If all of that stuff is so stagnant, why are you bothered about the copyright lease being so long? Look for cheap or free indie media.
Re:More harm than good? (Score:5, Insightful)
If all of that stuff is so stagnant, why are you bothered about the copyright lease being so long? Look for cheap or free indie media.
You're missing the point of that adage. The mosquitoes don't stay in the stagnant pool of water once they've bred. They fly off and bite anyone they can find.
Likewise, absurd lease lengths on copyrights don't just effect the works the protect, but impact the entire media realm. Why bother funding new, creative media when you get the copyright on Mickey Mouse extended for another 90 years and keep milking that cow? Or, for that matter, why bother creating anything at all, when you can become a patent troll and makes tens of millions of dollars by suing other people for bothering to create something. (And so on.)
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You're missing the point of that adage. The mosquitoes don't stay in the stagnant pool of water once they've bred. They fly off and bite anyone they can find.
Ah, we don't have mosquitoes here so I don't really think of them as a big deal. I've only ever seen them in movies :P
Our midges [wisegeek.com] tend to stay in the vicinity of the stagnant water rather than roaming.
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Sorry, I have adblock so didn't notice, and I liked the Wisegeek article better than the Wikipedia one, which is even lighter on .
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Such thing as "free indie media" doesn't exists. If you have an internet radio you have to pay royalties, if you have a bar and play music you have to pay, in Germany everyone is paying a royalty on CDs, DVDs, flash drivers, hard disks. The "Content Industry" have such power that they lobbied every government that if you play music you have to pay royalties to them even if you don't play any music owned by them. Either you pay the royalties or you are at a very great risk of being sued to death.
Thanks to su
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Indeed. There was an article in the local paper last year about a bar owner here who hired folk singers. Folk songs are old, public domain music; no copyrights apply. Yet ASCAP insisted on royalties, he refused, and the litigation put him out of business.
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Well, maybe something got in the translation, or you cherry-picked a plausible mis-translation, but I will play along!)
If all of that stuff is so stagnant, why are you bothered about the copyright lease being so long?
You missed the whole point here. I apologize profoundly if my intended concept was so ineptly stated. My purpose was to allude to the concept that life, and thus living life was dynamic, and we have to adapt as a species to survive. We have provided a lot of evidence that we are adaptable, dynamically as a species.
As a side note regarding IP[Intellectual Property/Imaginative Property]:
My p
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The mosquito illustration was probably throwing people off. I usually try to avoid such illustrations because you're going to get people that take it too far or argue about unimportant points, because the comparison is going to fail if it is taken to far, and it becomes a distraction.
I don't think it's anarchist to suggest reform, that would be a silly accusation to worry about.
Copyright law is very excessive right now, especially when you have a broadly interpreted meaning of "limited", which is functiona
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Yeah, the analogy threw me off a little, sorry. I generally agree with your point, but it also reminded me of those who think that the current music and film industry is too full of crap anyway, and made me wonder if this group intersects highly with the group who want to shorten copyright terms, which wouldn't make that much sense.
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Major reform is needed. One thing I learned from my GrandDad[among many, numerous things], was that only stagnant water breeds mosquitoes. Think about the concept seriously for a moment, it is enlightening.
The trouble if you apply that logic is that it cuts both ways. Long standing rights and principles can be cut down just as easily as old relics that have lost their purpose and meaning. And the answer depends extremely on who you ask, others would say copyrights and patents are more important now than ever in the "information economy". Some would say the second amendment is an old relic from the days of the minutemen, others think it's a vital civil right today. It's only an argument that appeal to people t
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Don't Ask, Don't Tell (Score:2)
Rapidshare says they don't open or inspect the files uploaded by its users
They list a number of 'legitimate' uses
They say copyrighted files do get uploaded
But they say these files are in a minority compared with the legitimate uses
How do they know, without having inspected the files?
*.R00 (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, copyright prevents you from sharing a chapter of a book just as it does the entire book, so I suspect the same principle would apply to partial archive files.
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You can read the chapter without reading the rest of the book. Archive bits, on the other hand, are useless without a complete set.
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The courts recognize intent. If you're sharing a paragraph of a book with others with the intent to discuss its impact on modern society, that's fine.
If you're sharing the same paragraph with the intent of combining it with other paragraphs hosted by different people, that's copyright infringement.
IANAL
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Intent matters to the law. If you host content with the intent of sharing it illegally, that's illegal, regardless of the technical measures used to obfucsate it. Geeks tend to forget this. It's not the format of the content, but the intent of the human who uploaded or hosted it.
Everything can be used for Piracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything can be used for "Piracy".
Before we had tapes, then Floppies, then CDs, then P2P and websites...
I can send illegal files by email, by handing them over on a thumb drive...
Its easier if we just add "Everything" to the list of Piracy and let it be done.
Re:Everything can be used for Piracy. (Score:4, Informative)
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Is that thing actually getting sold finally? I've seen the release date pushed back over and over again and I'm reluctant to spend money on what might just be an elaborate scam.
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The slightly longer story is they finished the cases last spring with production beginning in the summer but the nubs were found to be defective. After a few months of nub redesign production has started back up. ~1500 have been shipped and they are completing and shipping about 300-500 a week now.
If you are concerned I would probably monitor for a week or two and if nothing happens t
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Everything can be used for "Piracy"....
Its easier if we just add "Everything" to the list of Piracy and let it be done.
That's EXACTLY what the copyright cartels are trying to do.
RapidShare (Score:2, Informative)
RapidShare has saved my bacon more than once when my radio station server was borked and I couldn't ftp to it, so I uploaded my news stories to RapidShare and the news director could get my stories before the deadline for final editing (and I got to be the tech hero).
I've also used it for sharing my personal files, photos, video, etc. with friends all over the world.
RapidShare is a great service for legitimate uses.
Same here (Score:3)
FTP down, nonexistent or blocked in a client's building. You need to transfer a few hundred megs of data. Rapidshare to the rescue.
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No search? Yeah right. (Score:2)
Missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, RapidShare is used a lot for copyrighted material, but it's not as if it's their doing. On the contrary, they seem to make a lot of effort to remove copyrighted material - at least a lot of the links I see are deleted. Whether or not this is them specifically searching for it, or it being reported, I have no idea.
What next? FTP is used for uploading copyrighted material too. What an evil protocol.
Slashdot loves car analogies right? Clearly cars that can drive over the speed limit are also to blame for speeding.
does Porn count as "legitimate interest"? (Score:2)
Didn't even know they had any piracy on there. Maybe the porn is meant to distract people from noticing?
How do they know a minority pirate? (Score:2)
If Rapidshare doesn't inspect its users' uploads, how do they know that only a minority of uploads are pirate? Genuinely stumped for a good hypothesis here, just trawling the web for Rapidshare links and classifying them doesn't strike me as an easy thing to automate.
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It's exactly as it should be as far as accusations of mischief by the content providers are concerned, but that's likely to comically underestimate the amount of actual piracy that's going on.
Rapidshare? Are you kidding? (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess their data is just out of date.
Maybe a year ago you could have seen a lot of traffic on Rapidshare, but slow speeds, low filesize limits and long wait times have made Rapidshare go the way of MySpace.
Now you have a completely different set of players, there's Hotfile, Fileserve, Netload, Filesonic, Depositfiles, and a whole bunch of others.
If you go to a site that posts such links you'd be hard pressed to find one Rapidshare link in fifty.
And I bet the **AAs are just about getting ready to do something about Rapidshare.
go after "linkers", not "storers"? (Score:2)
When someone calls his favorite episode of House HS1E8.rar and uploads it with a password to rapidshare, he is not breaking any laws. He just wants to be able to access it from everywhere he goes using whatever device with whatever limited memory.
The laws could be broken when he or someone else who deciphered a very cryptic name of the file and a sophisticated password ("monkey") posts a link on his blog:
T
Rapidshare does respond to complaints (Score:2)
Isn't (nearly) everything copyrighted nowadays? (Score:2)
What are "copyrighted files"? Everything created recently, i.e. before 70 years after the death of the author, IS copyrighted... unless explicitly being put in the public domain by its author. Including your favorite Linux distro, and files released under CC and similar licenses. Including t
Re:Understandable (Score:5, Insightful)
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Uh, that's like saying because of some new initiative police employ failed because it only drove murder down 80% and not 100% in that you're setting the bar for success way too high.
If something you describe came to pass, the RIAA/MPAA/others would have won because it would reduce sharing dramatically by restricting it to a select few rather than the world at large. I've encountered several password protected downloads before, and I gave up rather than waste the time hunting down the password or anything e
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That doesn't restrict it much more than RapidShare does right now. They have no search mechanic and don't vet the contents of their files (though presumably they have some means to identify bad content or have it reported to them for removal, because otherwise I would have expected a massive CP bust against them simply because any way to anonymously share files over the internet through a third party is bound to end up with it's share...just look at the chans).
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Anyway, didn't youtube start out as a haven for piracy? Keep going I say, maybe you'll be work something as a legitimate business one day.
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There is at least one site out there that keeps a DB of P2P distributed files by their hashes on the various systems, lists common filenames for them, descriptions and reviews. I just wish I could remember the URL to link it. They of course had the problem with trolls that any site with user-generated content does, but something like it but with better moderation would work well, I think.
Shareaza also supports ratings and reviews on P2P files, although I'm not sure how it goes about it, or if it's a stand
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Incorrect, here is a simple explanation [slashdot.org] of how RapidShare could ,with a very high degree of success, detect piracy on their site that even a toddler can understand. They dont even have to check the filenames, just check the name of the uploader (has it uploaded piracy before? then this new upload is probably also piracy) and the referer header of downloaders (comes from a warez site? then file is likely piracy).
Think what you want about the morality of copyright infringement. But saying that the technology
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The point is not to have a bullet-proof system. The point is to make a system that is sufficiently good at detecting warez that pirates will use another method. Yes, an evil genius warez pirate hacker can white-wash the link using an url shortener. The system can do a simple google search and see which domains it is placed on. Yes, you can create lots of accounts, you can also record how many accounts a single ip creates and ban them for abuse if they create to many.
Bayesian spam filters are also trivial to
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No, the point is don't lower the hammer on something just because it could have infringing uses... or even because, in practice, some uses are infringing.
If that were the case, cars would be banned because they're used to break laws. Knives would be forbidden because they are used to commit assault. Hell, words would be outlawed because they can be formed into libel.
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And that a toddler could circumvent if you actually put it into practice. Plus you would have a HUGE amount of false positives. Basically, you are assuming "Guilty until proven innocent" and deleting any "popular" file on suspicion.
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just check the name of the uploader (has it uploaded piracy before? then this new upload is probably also piracy)
So the pirates create a new account for each upload.
and the referer header of downloaders (comes from a warez site? then file is likely piracy).
So the warez site jumps via an HTTPS redirect, which causes the browser not to send the referrer header.
As the saying goes, for any complex problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong.
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You just end up with a cat and mouse game.
The pirates have an advantage that rapidshare is primarly something that is linked to from private forums. It's not something that users search. A pirate can call a file whatchawhig.rar, even encrypt it, then simply include the key in his post (along with the real title of the file). Sample post:
----
Hey guy's check out (some new movie and or song):
(rapid share url)/cooking_lessons.rar
Password is: ohnoes
----
It's not like youtube where the content has to be in a usabl
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Except Youtube actually has access to the content, while Rapidshare doesn't if the file is encrypted.
Re:Understandable (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:file names (Score:2)
NASA_Space_Sex.rar
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Plus it wouldn't work. Soon it'd be full of encrypted RARs of filenames like aiegflaeaergfaer.rar, or possibly sales_reports.rar... no way anyone could tell what they are unless they are a member of the private forum where the link and decryption password are posted.
*cough*....yes soon......not doing that already.
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It's true that RapidShare is used for piracy but the same applies to other similar sites too.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with defamation. The simple fact is, they absolutely know they are a piracy hot spot. They'd be absolute idiots if they sue. Suing means their own data becomes open to subpoena. Which means they are primed to be royally fucked.
The only way they can prove they have suffered from defamation is to actually look at their own content. Once they look at their own content, by law, they will be forced to disable tons and tons (vast majority of their) content and accounts else they
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wikileaks would work in that scenario... and also has the same gotchas
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"Oh you know, hosting mods for games (a.k.a. Hacks, as interpreted by some companies) , archives full of images (i.e. kiddie porn) this sort of stuff."
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And RS has lawyers and knows that full well. So of course they keep themselves well away from indexing sites. They would hardly have issued this challenge if it were possible to trip them up so easily.
By the way, if you look at many of these sites that promise to find stuff on Rapidshare, what they are is simply a customised Google search, plus a crapload of porn ads. DIY and Google for "moviename + Rapidshare" and you'
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