Copyright online keeps getting benefits, following the collapse of the file-sharing giant Megaupload.
In this case, an old date competitor of Megaupload is affected, although in a lighter way, by a court order: the company Rapidshare, based in Germany, among the first to provide its users with online storage at competitive prices.
The High Regional Court of Hamburg, with an order issued recently, declared Rapidshare’s activities as “legitimate” (in terms of a business model based on “public offering of online file storage”), but at the same time ordered the German company to enact an accurate monitoring of third-party web sites, and consequently block the access to all files that are shared among users on plain pirate websites.
We know that Rapidshare will surely appeal the latter part of the order, strong of the recognition of its behavior as quite different from the one of Megaupload, however, we can only applaud the change of perspective proposed by the German High Court: as the provider of online storage services is often unable to control in real time what is uploaded on its servers and therefore limits its responses to a mechanical removal of contents or individual accounts reported by visitors, imposing it an obligation to act preventively with a removal of content uploaded to its servers and shared on plain pirate websites seems a good start, to restore a balance with copyright owners.