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Anonymous
The Germany society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights GEMA has obtained temporary injunctions from the District Court in Cologne against the operator of data exchange services RapidShare.de and RapidShare.com.
The so-called "sharehosters services operate in a similar way, allowing users to upload content on virtual storage space, thus making the respective content publicly available. They are considered to have used copyrighted works of GEMA members "in an unlawful fashion".
GEMA asked from RapidShares operator to reveal the number of copyrighted files of GEMA artists presently stored without license. According to GEMA spokesman Hans-Herwig Geyer, RapidShare.de has boasted of having some 15 million files available to its users. RapidShare has claimed to have no control or knowledge of the content uploaded by the users considering it had no legal responsibility.
Through its injunction the District Court in Cologne has now however made it clear to the company that the fact that the users and not the operator of the services were the ones that uploaded the content onto the sites did not, from a legal point of view, lessen the operator's liability for copyright infringements occurred within the context of the services.
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.2/rapidshare
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