Filehoster RapidShare: judgment before 2020 unlikely

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Christian Schmid, the German founder of RapidShare, stood in September 2018 together with his wife and ex-corporate lawyer in the criminal court Zug. The court has to decide whether the world's first filehoster has done enough to prevent the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works.

RapidShare: Judgment due for one year

From 12 September 2018, three defendants had to answer before a court in central Switzerland . The Criminal Court Zug now has to decide whether the first Filehoster has ever done enough in the fight against online piracy. In the worst case, the three defendants are convicted of commercial mendacity in countless copyright infringements. The prosecution demands sensitive fines. She accuses RapidShare AG of having directly or indirectly earned the distribution of black copies of premium paid (RapidPro) accounts. In addition, according to the prosecutor, they have not done enough to prevent the illegal distribution of the works.

Did you do everything humanly possible?

According to its own statements, RapidShare and its employees have " really done everything reasonable and even unacceptable " in order " not to be an attractive platform for copyright infringement ". One will see if the court will follow this view. In the room with fine and fine a total of over 642,000 euros. At first it was said that the sentence should be served on the defendants within the first six weeks after the end of the proceedings. Now, more than a year later, nothing has changed yet.

Strafgericht Zug has a lot of room for maneuver

Christian Schmid has again asked the criminal court Zug because of the still undelivered verdict. Also at his request was again no information, " when there will be a verdict ". This he answered us on a recent press request. In the interview , Swiss lawyer Martin Steiger told us a few months ago that the court could use a large amount of leeway in its decision-making. Steiger believes that Swiss-based filehosters are becoming increasingly responsible for the content uploaded by their users. Therefore, it is questionable when, for example, the competitor Smoozedwill migrate abroad. The revised copyright law in Switzerland also aims to oblige operators to keep reported works permanently offline. If the re-upload (Reupload) should succeed, you want to take the Swiss Filehoster with high claims for damages, etc. in the obligation.

The Internet is no Wild West more ...

But the new Swiss legislation is irrelevant to RapidShare. The former world's leading provider of online storage was "only" from the end of May 2002 until the end of March 2015. Almost 13 years on the internet anyway an endlessly long period. In terms of the life cycle of a filehoster, it is an eternity. Of course, this also shows that in the first few years much of the Internet was not covered by the legal situation. And where there were no corresponding laws and judgments, one could not violate any in the wild because unregulated start time. Of these, the Bochum gulli: board or for example Megaupload has benefited from Kim Schmitz for many years . But these times are long gone.