rapidshire - is legal?

[Zbigniew Koziol]

I got the idea. Well... I doubt really if it is possible not to, at 
least temporarily, to store some of files.

Redirecting (pointing to illegal source) might be legal but it is 
certainly not right in common sense. Here I would see however a 
difference  between pointing to an illegal content on another server 
(and letting know about that to average user) and between not letting 
know about that to users. Though legally this is indeed a gray field.

zb.

Darryl Moore wrote:
> IANAL but....
>
> It's a simple web based file sharing distribution system. The links to
> files you upload are not displayed on any of their web pages. It is up
> to you to make the http links available as you see fit.
>
> As for who is responsible for the legality of the content being
> distributed, that is a grey area of copyright law. However, if you are
> using it to distribute or acquire data which you know you have a right
> to distribute/acquire, then there is no legal issue for YOUR use of
> their site. It is the same as using any other web hosting service in
> that way.
>
> Using it to acquire data, you should make some reasonable effort to
> ensure that you have a right to a copy of the data (known GPL software
> for example). If THERE IS NO copyright infringement happening, then it
> is not illegal (neglecting the obvious child porn, and other verboten
> data issues of course)
>
>
> That's my $0.02 anyway
> cheers,
> darryl
>
> Zbigniew Koziol wrote:
>   
>> They offer two kinds of services - a free one that seldom works and a
>> paid one which I never try.
>>
>> Through their web site one can download a huge number of, for instance,
>> books (in PDF format). They have also a lot of software (e.g. right now
>> I saw MatLab). Most of the books are certainly allowed to be
>> distributed. In some cases this is not so obvious, though. They I am
>> sure have also videos (probably porno, too) but I did not care to check
>> for that kind of stuff.
>>
>> Well... for myself only, I would not mind so much to download software
>> just to try, even when it might be not entirely obvious if this is fully
>> legal. However, I can not use a possibly illegal software in my work.
>>
>> Therefore, I wonder if anyone here is able to advise on legality of
>> their service. For a rather small payment one could get tons of
>> gigabytes of data from them. Their payments network is very broad, so I
>> just wonder how all this works?
>>
>>
>> zb.
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>   

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