Bite The hand??

RapidShare Calls to Kill Linking Websites

RapidShare believes that instead of creating new laws which may come into conflict with innovation, the American government should better focus on killing websites offering links towards pirated material. At least, that’s what the cyberlocker offers.
In order to ensure that the US authorities take this recommendation seriously, the RapidShare’s Chief Legal Officer Daniel Raimer arranged a meeting with technology leaders and law enforcement at the Technology Policy Institute.

RapidShare is known worldwide as an already established file-hosting service, but there’s one problem. The company believes that a lot of sites are using links directing users towards this type of illegal services. Regarding this as a serious problem, Daniel Raimer appeared at the Technology Policy Institute forum in Aspen and also made a decision to join a panel on Copyright and Piracy in order to inform that file-hosting services couldn’t be blamed for today’s issues with copyright infringement, but only the means through which users host their content.

According to RapidShare, instead of developing legislation which could stifle innovation in the cloud, the American government should concentrate on this critical part of the Internet piracy network. The cyberlocker points out that these very sophisticated services, usually featuring advertising, do facilitate the mass indiscriminate distribution of copyrighted material online and should be the focus of American IP enforcement efforts.

In addition, RapidShare believes that the US authorities should encourage voluntary industry agreements to address piracy in a manner which is beneficial for everybody. Agreements of this type already exist in the advertising business, so neither payment providers nor file-hosting services should be disregarded.

RapidShare claims that the United States should continue its work to secure voluntary industry agreements in order to address repeated Internet piracy and counterfeiting, as well as include cloud storage and file-hosting businesses in these efforts. In 2012, the company published a “responsible practices” document for file-hosting businesses – RapidShare believes that this should be the starting point for an industry agreement.

Finally, Daniel Raimer thinks that when cyberlockers take responsibility and linking sites are killed, copyright owners could have much less to worry about.