Last week, the file-hosting giant Rapidshare lost a case to the German copyright society GEMA.
As part of the ruling, Rapidshare was told to “proactively filter” over 5000 tracks from GEMA’s catalog and make sure they are not distributed on their servers.
Rapidshare has announced this weekend that they will in fact be appealing the verdict.
GEMA created a software that can search web forums and extract links that infringe on GEMA’s copyrights. Rapidshare however, scoffs at the software, claiming it does not work.
“It’s questionable whether the application can deal with mechanisms to prevent the scraping of links, open encrypted files, accurately identify audio files or find links in forums that can’t be accessed by search engines.”
They of course are correct, as the software will not be able to identify mislabeled files, password protected RAR files, and more notably, files posted in private Warez forums.
Rapidshare CEO Bobby Chang also noted that GEMA is following in the footsteps of the RIAA, which will in turn alienate their own fans and customers.
“GEMA is trying to turn back time,” he concluded.
Result for: encrypted files
A program called Tunebite promises to strip the DRM off your Nokia Comes With Music unlimited downloads, all for the one-time price of £17.50.
Comes With Music, an unlimited music download program that comes with certain Nokia handsets, has Microsoft-powered DRM, but it can be stripped easily with the program allowing users to keep the music forever.
The program works by playing the tracks at 54x speed while re-dubbing them as non-encrypted files. Using this method, the DRM is stripped within seconds, even for long songs.
Should be interesting how long the program is available before Nokia or Microsoft says something.
