Rapidshare hand out uploader's details, house raided

[12eason]

here ya go, a little light reading.

None of which require uk isps to examine and report, as was claimed.

in fact;

Data can only be obtained by a public
authority when it is necessary in a given
investigation

 

[Colonel Travis]

It is because of their stupid, selfish actions that our freedoms are being removed and everyone is being spied on.

No, it's because Rapidshare says in plain English that they do not tolerate the uploading of illegal material. And they also say this in bold:

At violation of our Conditions of use, we are authorized to block your access and delete your files. If you write programs aiming to violate our Conditions of Use, you will be prosecuted and made liable for any losses occurred.

You're a moron if you use RS and don't know this.

PS - The first Napster court case was 10 years ago. Copyright battles have been fought since copyrights were invented. If you don't like that, fine. But geez - at least stop being surprised.

 

[Orbital Shark]

But i'm sure if a site such as RS was being investigated then the authorities would have the right to see details of who is uploading to the general public. If RS was just labelled as a storage site (DropBox is a good example of this) then there wouldn't be such a robust investigation IMO....

 

[Orbital Shark]

You're a moron if you use RS and don't know this.

You want to be careful who you call 'Moron' on this forum. It's just so uncalled for....

 

[z3r010]

You want to be careful who you call 'Moron' on this forum. It's just so uncalled for....

He's right though, if you are going to distribute pirate material, you should at least read the terms and conditions of the distribution medium, not to would be stupid.

 

[Orbital Shark]

It could have been worded differently is all i'm getting at

 

[SIW2]

The fact they only need to retain the information for a set period is a practical matter connected to storage requirements.

It is not relevant to Win7's question.

What details exactly can they give out though witout breaking the law themselfs??

...And then be right on to rapidshare for giving out such "private" info...

Like many, he believes his data and privacy are protected by the law - in fact the opposite is true.

The requirement is to retain the information ( albeit for a limited period at present) and to hand it over if the authorities have good reason to believe there is illegal activity.

According to the link,

At first it was unclear how the identity of the uploader was revealed, but today German news outlet Gulli said
it had found out that this was likely to be accomplished by creative use of paragraph 101 of German copyright law.

My point about RS being forced to hand it over.

 

[Colonel Travis]

It could have been worded differently is all i'm getting at

"you" in the general sense. It wasn't directed to anyone specifically here. My apologies for any disconnect.

But, no, it could not have been worded differently. If you use RS, and the cops come knocking at your door, and you didn't know RS could prosecute you - my friend, you are a certified moron. RS does not hide the consequences.

 

[RST101]

Seems to be a bit of testosterone flying about here tonight, what have we been drinking. most of the information we are referring to when we are on about "authorities coming through the door wont be for the average user of tpb or rs but people who make money from it in big doses. Are they coming through my door because I downloaded an album? Or maybe a game? I don't think so. Now if I was selling those for massive profit then I could understand. Or if it was related to terrorism etc etc then this information can quite rightly be used.

I agree with Orbital Shark, calling unknown (even though some have declared using rs) persons morons is quite uncalled for.

 

[abuttino]

Here's what I see:

Here coment right from TorrentFreak!
Rapidshare is Swiss based company!

"HEY!
Rapidshare is located in Switzerland and NOT in GERMANY!

The first is ’small an neutral’, the latter ‘big and misunderstood’.

Given that this simple fact is wrong, I start doubting the whole story.

Get your facts right ERNESTO! Gulli is also no news outlet but a fu…g big sausage-fest for idiots.

ok…let me summarize: they talked to a SWISS judge who then forces Rapidshare to hand over the IP. Then they have to go to a GERMAN judge who has to force the german ISP to hand over the address for that IP.

Sounds pretty complicated, given that as far as I know GERMAN law, this is not allowed."

Crap..

 

[Colonel Travis]

The HQ is Switzerland. Some servers are in Germany, which is why GEMA and RS have been in various legal fights there for a few years.

person: Bobby Chang
address: Teraspace GmbH
address: Benzstrasse 1
address: 79341 Kenzingen
address: DE
phone: +491772453933

 

[jimbo45]

Rapidshare R.I.P and goodriddance. Half the stuff they advertise doesn't exist anyway and loads of their torrents are riddled with "Little presents" for the downloaders.

If anybody users them now then they deserve what they get. Total Snitches -- in anycase users should mask their IP addresses if they are downlading "Questionable material".

Use Private trackers like the 'OID' if you must.

All this stuff does is drive it underground (won't make any of it go away) and force people to start using sophisticated encryption schemes and give their torrents totally meaningless names to people "Outside the know" -- imagine how much work this would cause for people like F.B I. (Federal Bureau of Incompetants) as they'd have to DOWNLOAD EVERY torrent on earth every day to see whether it was legal or not.

Imagine what a can of worms that would be -- can a Law enforcement agency Commit a crime in order to see if a crime is being / has been commited.

The US legal system will have great fun with that one I'm sure.


Cheers
jimbo

 

[RST101]

Well said jimbo. RS is lame and lifeless, it will be now anway, lol.

 

[12eason]

Rapidshare R.I.P and goodriddance. Half the stuff they advertise doesn't exist anyway and loads of their torrents are riddled with "Little presents" for the downloaders.

Huh?

If anybody users them now then they deserve what they get. Total Snitches -- in anycase users should mask their IP addresses if they are downlading "Questionable material".

Unfortunately, most of these sites have systems to detect proxies and a proxy that can go undetected is either overloaded and slow (Tor) or unreliable. The only way to be sure is to use a paid service or buy your own server, and both are just as likely to get hit with a court order as RS.

Use Private trackers like the 'OID' if you must.

'oid is hardly private.

...encryption...

Unfortunately, all encryption does is hide you from your ISP and man-in-the-middle spies. If these people can easily get personal data from the company at the other end (whether that be astranews, rapidshare or mediasentry) then frankly all the encryption in the world won't help.

 

[jimbo45]

Huh?

...............

Unfortunately, all encryption does is hide you from your ISP and man-in-the-middle spies. If these people can easily get personal data from the company at the other end (whether that be astranews, rapidshare or mediasentry) then frankly all the encryption in the world won't help.

.................

Not quite true because if the content of the torrent was itself encrypted (title etc etc) the organisations chasing down "Illegal stuff" would have to know WHAT to download and also decrypt it in order to find out whether it was legal or not.

If your torrent is called say €9gvetti-^755id-xxxghffhih££).dqj and you were the FBI

Would you download this, decrypt it and see what's in it.

Imagine doing this every day for 100,000's of torrents as these torrents would change their names and be moved around on underground sites.

If you have the resources of the US Federal Gov you probably could do something but the sheer volume of resources required would make what the Banks have received look like a few cents given to a "panhandler" under a Los Angeles Freeway bridge.

P2P networks are 100% legal -- don't forget. It's what you as a user do with them. Same as Guns, Rat Poison / dangerous chemicals / cars etc etc.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[12eason]

True, and to a certain extend that was actually happening on Rapidshare. Just about everything was Rared and passworded. However, chances are where ever you get the torrent, RS links or Nzb from also has all the information needed to access the files. You can try and make those sites as difficult as possible for copyright holders to access, but if you get too strict you end up losing your 'customers' too.

 

[Colonel Travis]

If you have the resources of the US Federal Gov you probably could do something but the sheer volume of resources required would make what the Banks have received look like a few cents given to a "panhandler" under a Los Angeles Freeway bridge.

As a former employee of a member of the U.S. Congress., I assure you that even with unlimited funds, these dopes could never do anything proper about anything.

 

[garbanzo]

rapidshare is not going anyplace.

this raid must have been a lot of work to pull off. authorities would have first had to go to the RS HQ in Switzerland to get the uploader's IP, then to the ISP in Germany to get the name/address attached to that IP. it only happened because Metallica is so uptight about filesharing, and because the album leaked to the internet a day before it went retail.

i'd estimate that files on RS are 60% porn, 39% music/movies/apps, and 1% legit. they don't go after people's files unless that file is reported - then it gets deleted and they put an MD5 flag up so the file can't be reloaded as-is. RS puts up that notice about copyright just to save their own ass, but they are certainly not proactive about upholding the policy, otherwise they would be out of business.

even if they wanted to check files, it would be a logistical impossibility. i can't even guess how many TB of data are on RS servers. it's uncanny.

anway in spite of this incident, users are at minimal risk, especially ones who have premium accounts but just download - RS insists they only keep logs of bandwidth, not of files downloaded. as for uploads, well files are easy to track, they're sitting right there in a user's account and that account is associated with whatever IP uses it. just watch what you upload, or don't upload at all. it's not like torrents where you have to give in order to get...

 

[Digger]

further back down the hole everything shall go..... follow the bunny, Alice.

 

[Smashy]

Rapidshare R.I.P and goodriddance. Half the stuff they advertise doesn't exist anyway and loads of their torrents

Torrents? Bad choice of words or you have no idea what you're talking about? Either way I stopped reading there, nice try though.

As for the whole deal about rapidshare giving out info, they can be forced to hand out info, even here in Belgium where we're "protected" by privacy laws. If you **** up, you'll pay the price, simple as that.
I have a premium account on rapidshare and have used it every time to download several different Windows 7 versions and I love it!
99% of the stuff I download there caps out my download speed unlike all the other stuff I tried before, I'm not going to bother with torrents if I can get it on rapidshare because I got a ****ty upload speed and I get hosed if I try.