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Legal
Google look for judicial clarity on liabilities in defunct RapidShare case
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 7 May 2010
Google is taking legal action to try and resolve a side issue that stemmed from US indie label Blue Destiny Records’ previously reported copyright infringement litigation against file-transfer service RapidShare.
As previously reported, Blue Destiny last year sued RapidShare for copyright infringement because some of the file-transfer system’s users share unlicensed content via the tech firm’s servers. Blue Destiny claimed RapidShare was liable for contributory infringement for not stopping their user’s direct infringement.
A similar action in Germany by collecting society GEMA had forced RapidShare to look into introducing filters that tracked files being transferred via their servers and then blocked infringing content. The US indie subsequently launched its legal action despite said filters being developed. Though, interestingly, Blue Destiny then withdrew its lawsuit in March, six weeks before a German appeals court ruled RapidShare should not, in fact, operate content filters.
Anyway, Blue Destiny named Google and Microsoft’s search service Bing as co-defendants in their original lawsuit on the basis that both linked to infringing files being made available via RapidShare. It was an optimistic claim, because if any court made Google liable for inadvertently linking to copyright infringing content that would have huge ramifications for the wider search engine industry.
But nevertheless, Google are keen for there to be some legal clarity on this issue, to avoid future claims by content owners that they are liable for linking to others’ infringement. After Blue Destiny withdrew their RapidShare lawsuit, Google requested a commitment to not launch similar action against the search firm in the future. The label declined to provide such a commitment, hence the new legal action.
Google want the Californian courts to formally clarify that search engines are not liable for infringement if they inadvertently link to RapidShare links (or similar) that infringe copyrights, by issuing a judgement stating that the search firm never infringed any rights owned by Blue Destiny. The indie label is yet to comment.
Given it’s increasingly fashionable to bash Google these days, some in the blogosphere have criticised the web firm for pursuing what some have spun as a David v Goliath lawsuit, claiming that Google bosses would never have considered taking proactive legal action on this issue if the original dispute had been with a Sony or Universal.
