RapidShare didn't infringe on copyrights, says US court

The US District Court of California denied adult entertainment company Perfect 10's request for an injunction against file-sharing service RapidShare on Thursday, saying that the company did not offer sufficient proof that RapidShare itself had infringed on Perfect 10's copyrights.

Perfect 10 filed its lawsuit against RapidShare in late 2009, alleging that the Germany-based service illegally hosted the company's images for its members to distribute and download. Since P10 is a for-pay service, it argued that RapidShare was violating its distribution rights and making money off of its stolen content due to RapidShare's affiliate program that pays members for referring new users. Perfect 10 also argued that RapidShare had induced users to download its adult content because, after all, RapidShare is good for nothing but copyright infringement. Basically, the mere existence of RapidShare as a file sharing service was equivalent to inducement in P10's eyes. In her ruling this week, District Judge Marilyn L. Huff said that P10 failed to make a sufficient case of direct infringement against RapidShare, though she did concede that the service had specific knowledge of infringement by its users thanks to the copyright notices sent.