Andre Yoskowitz
19 Mar 2012 0:00
A higher court in Germany has ruled this week that cyberlocker Rapidshare must proactively filter pirated content from its site.
The decision upholds similar rulings from lower courts, each of which said the cyberlocker did not do enough to prevent piracy on its servers.
Germany's ruling covers both music and book downloads and dated back to an original case in 2009 brought by GEMA, a German organization representing that country's composers, vocalists, and music publishers.
Although the ruling has not been made public yet, reports say Rapidshare will have to monitor all the files uploaded before they are made available to download via the site.
Because such an endeavor would be impossible for Rapidshare staff, the cyberlocker will clearly need to create a software or script to filter the content.