German METALLICA Fan's Home Raided After He Allegedly Uploaded 'Death Magnetic' Illegally

April 27, 2009

According to Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica, file-hosting service RapidShare has reportedly handed over to the record industry the IP data of the user who had uploaded a copy of METALLICA's new album "Death Magnetic" to his RapidShare account a day before its worldwide release.

The issue came to light after the user claimed that his house was raided by law enforcement thanks to RapidShare, as reported by German-language news outlet Gulli. METALLICA's label supposedly asked RapidShare for the user's IP address, and then asked Deutsche Telekom to identify the user behind the IP before sending law enforcement his way.

In January of 2008, RapidShare found itself pitted against GEMA (the German version of the RIAA) arguing that it was not responsible for the content that users uploaded to the site. The Düsseldorf Regional Court didn't buy it, ruling against RapidShare, saying that the company is responsible for those files and would have to check every file for copyrighted material. In October, the court spelled out its expectations a little more clearly, saying that RapidShare must remove infringing content proactively, despite RapidShare's insistence that it had already hired on six staffers whose sole job was to go through uploaded material and respond to complaints about infringement.

Read the entire report from Ars Technica.

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