Rapidshare tells world+dog: Stop PIRACY now!
Cyberlocker says it's on the straight and narrow
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Rapidshare wants to lose its notoriety as a haven for copyright infringement – and become a legitimate cloud service. The cyberlocker’s chief lawyer Daniel Raimer has written a four-page "anti-piracy manifesto" and hopes this will head off stronger laws that will make legitimate takedowns of infringing websites easier.
Rapidshare's proposals, dubbed "responsible practices for cloud storage", include making files private by default, clamping down on drive-by uploaders, terminating accounts after multiple complaints, and proactively policing for copyright infringement.
“Piracy is a serious problem... we're reinforcing our efforts to eradicate it, and ...we're calling on other data logistics companies to do the same,” Raimer said in a press release. You can read the document here or below.
Raimer is clear that the proposals are designed to head off changes to internet liability laws. Today’s “safe harbour provisions” were designed to encourage online marketplaces from bullying copyright industries. But the perception amongst lawmakers today is that the balance of power has tipped too far in the other direction.
While nobody loves Hollywood, small independent film-makers (without powerful and expensive lawyers) must spend their time playing whack-a-mole, filing takedowns – which are usually ignored – against cyberlockers. Indie film-maker Ellen Seidler explains the problem here.
The answer is finding a settlement that restores justice, protects other important principles, such as privacy, and minimises unforeseen consequences. For example, Rapidshare proposes removing the assumption that the cyberlocker doesn’t routinely rifle through your uploads, looking for possible copyright infringement. It should only do so when there’s been a legitimate complaint. What, then, defines legitimate?
The notion that cloud services are oblivious to everything that's hosted on their services is a little far-fetched. In 2010 Google dismissed an engineer who dipped into teenagers’ Gmail and Gchat services. He was in the ranks of Chocolate Factory techies who have access to all users' communications. Nobody wants this abuse to become routine.
For the RIAA, though, fine words butter no parsnips. It wants stronger law, not pledges, and points out to Ars Technica that Rapidshare is carrying on much as before.
As we observed during the SOPA storm, laws aren’t necessary if enlightened voluntary agreements can be made instead. It just takes a bit of good will; finding a rational middle-ground that gives us a fairer internet than today’s shouldn’t be rocket science.
Earlier this month a Paramount executive revealed a "hit list" of the next five cyberlockers it had in its sights: MediaFire, PutLocker, Depositfiles, Wupload and Fileserve.
Rapidshare wasn’t on the list. ®
Bootnote
Selecting a legitimate cloud service, such as Dropbox, to use for storing files online shouldn't be difficult, and for most people it isn't. But strangely, some folks have chosen to become momentarily confused when the choice arises. If in doubt, to be on the safe side, we recommend you avoid backing up your important files to any site that says it will delete your stuff after 30 days, and that's run by (say) a very large man with the number plates HACKER and MAFIA.
COMMENTS
So...
if violators regularly choose obscure file names for their password protected .rar files shared on cloud services, HOW WILL THEY KNOW?
It doesn't matter what Rapidshare want
They have absolutely no way of preventing a general file upload / download service being used for piracy.
They could scan file names and pirates would pick random ones.
They could look for audio / video data matching particular fingerprints and pirates will just zip up the content.
They could unzip the content to scan it and pirates would simply encrypt the content with a strong password which they disclose elsewhere such as on a forum.
They could ban encrypted zips but then pirates will start throwing data into other seemingly innocuous container formats.
They could monitor referrer links but pirates would start redirecting download links through seemingly innocuous thirdparty sites.
They could monitor downloader's IP addresses at which point they start using Tor or other anonymizing services.
It's an arms race. There is absolutely no way Rapidshare can police or prevent all but the crudest forms of piracy. They can include a "report this link", they can flag content which is suspicious, they can facilitate legitimate takedown notices but there isn't much else they could do without annoying their legit customers or hurting their own service.
I wonder if the answer isn't to know more about the data but to know less. To require all uploads to be encrypted and to give all uploads incomprehensible names. Then they can respond to takedowns as they come in but they are not in a position of having to police the content because they have no idea what it is. They're basically carriers.
They need to innovate, and make buying stuff simpler. But you're living in 2003.
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