Legislation currently on the table in Washington threatens the Internet as we know it. The PROTECT IP Act in particular could mean the end for many web services.

The PROTECT IP Act gives authorities and copyright holders a broad range of tools to censor sites they deem to be facilitating copyright infringement. Aside from domain seizures, they can demand that search engines remove ‘rogue sites’ from their results, order ISPs to block their domains, and cut off their payments.

But what exactly is a rogue site? Judges will often base their verdicts merely on descriptions of entertainment industry groups such as the RIAA and the MPAA. According to RapidShare, one of the oldest file-hosting services, this is a problem.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, RapidShare general counsel Daniel Raimer confirmed that this vagueness is one of the main reasons why they hired lobbying firms to represent their interests in Washington. RapidShare has been frequently labeled a piracy haven and a rogue site by the entertainment industry, but Raimer said this is not justified.

“RapidShare’s goal in Washington is the same goal it has in the marketplace: to reassure potential customers that it is doing everything in its power to eradicate abuse. The officials that RapidShare has met with appreciate the company’s openness and willingness to assert industry leadership,” Raimer told TorrentFreak.

According to RapidShare, U.S. policymakers and opinion leaders have welcomed the opportunity to learn more about the company’s side of the story.

As a company, RapidShare sees itself operating in the “cloud hosting” business, offering a service comparable to the likes of Dropbox. And since people are moving data from local drives to the cloud at an increasing rate, these companies will undoubtedly host some copyrighted material too.

The question is then, what defines whether these cloud hosting services are labeled as ‘rogue’ operations, and when does it become warranted to seize their domain names?

“It is imperative that our governments need to have serious and well-thought discussions about cloud computing services,” Raimer told TorrentFreak.

“These discussions should be about consumer interests, about privacy concerns, about the content industry’s wish for the implementation of content recognition and filter technologies and the way providers are expected to deal with illegal content.”

Over recent years, RapidShare has taken a very strict stance against copyright infringement; disconnecting repeated offenders and even going after sites that index content hosted on their servers. Despite these efforts, they are still seen as a piracy haven by many.

By sharing their concerns RapidShare is trying to convince lawmakers that the picture is not as black and white as the RIAA and MPAA often paint it. A good discussion is needed to carefully determine what the rights and obligations of cloud hosting services are.

“RapidShare would like to be a constructive participant in these discussions as a ‘best practices’ leader. We have more knowledge on how to crack down against copyright abuse than any other company in the industry,” Raimer said.

“We have a 24/7 anti-abuse department, as well as a repeat infringer policy; DMCA take-down notices are instituted within one hour during regular business hours; we do not have reward program –to identify only a few of our efforts,” RapidShare’s general counsel added.

There are of course limits to what RapidShare is willing to do to protect the interests of copyright holders. Not to hinder the entertainment industries, but to secure the privacy of its customers.

“We have always highly respected our users’ privacy. We don’t analyze and filter files. By our terms of service we are strictly forbidden to access and open our users’ files – and we strictly abide by that,” Raimer said.

RapidShare believes that their decision to directly talk to the lawmakers in Washington has been the right one. The officials they have talked to are very eager to hear the other side of the story, and RapidShare’s efforts bring some much needed balance to the table.

Whether it will pay off, and to what extent, is something we’ll have to wait and see in the coming months.

Source: RapidShare Fights for “The Cloud” in Washington

Late last year both the MPAA and RIAA informed the Office of the US Trade Representative that RapidShare is a piracy haven, a so-called rogue website.

In the hope of correcting this and other misconceptions surrounding their operations, RapidShare then took the unprecedented step of hiring the lobbying firm Dutko Worldwide, who also work for Google.

Initially, little was known about the priorities of RapidShare in Washington, but the most recent lobbying report filed by Dutko reveals that the PROTECT IP Act is high up the list. For good reason, because if the bill becomes law RapidShare could be one of the first to be put out of business, in the United States at least.

Under the PROTECT IP Act, authorities (and copyright holders) will have a broad range of tools to censor sites they deem to be facilitating copyright infringement, starting with domain seizures.

In case a domain is not registered or controlled by a U.S. company, authorities can order search engines to remove the website from their search results and order ISPs to block the website.

Although the above measures are already quite far-reaching, the bill also allows for private copyright holders to use some of the same tools as the Government. Without due process, copyright holders can obtain a court order to prevent payment providers and ad-networks from doing business with sites that allegedly facilitate copyright infringement.

One of the many problems of such a law is who gets to decide what the definition of a “rogue website” is. In common with other file-sharing platforms, RapidShare is often labeled as seriously problematic, despite the fact that they’ve been found to operate legally by a U.S. federal court. This could lead to a situation where hundreds of legitimate businesses are virtually shut down because the entertainment industry sees them as a threat.

To make lawmakers aware of these threats and to improve their image in Washington, RapidShare has already spent $260,000 in lobbying efforts during the first half of 2011.

The PROTECT IP Act, currently placed on hold by Senator Ron Wyden, is crucial in this regard as the RIAA and MPAA have already labeled RapidShare as a rogue website. This means that when the bill is signed into law the file-hoster could be one of the first companies to be targeted.

Whether RapidShare’s lobbying efforts in Washington will pay off is yet to be seen. It is no secret that entertainment industry groups are lobbying extensively in favor of the PROTECT IP Act, with much bigger budgets. That said, it’s certainly better than standing idly by.

In the coming months RapidShare is expected to continue their lobbying efforts at the White House Office, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Not only against the PROTECT IP Act, but to improve the image of their company and protect their rights and those of other file-hosting services.

Source: RapidShare Lobbies Lawmakers Against PROTECT IP Act

India, the world’s second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, is without doubt a growing force to be reckoned with on all fronts. With increasing numbers of tech-savvy residents it is also a potential goldmine for music, movie and software companies.

Of course, with the spread of Internet access file-sharing is attracting attention too. Now it appears, for whatever reason, that the sharing of files is being curtailed by India’s government.

During the last 24 hours users of some of the country’s largest Internet service providers have found that they are barred from a selection of the world’s foremost file-hosting sites.

According to an initial report by a user known as Sushubh and screenshots first provided by Airtel customer Sunny Chahal, the blocks have been ordered by DOT, the Indian Government’s Department of Telecommunications. The screenshot below shows the message greeting Airtel customers.

Airtel is reported to have been the most aggressive, refusing access to a who’s-who list of cyberlockers including:

RapidShare.com
Mediafire.com
MegaUpload.com
Hotfile.com
SendSpace.com
Fileserve.com
MegaVideo.com
VideoBB.com
Novamov.com
Movshare.net
Filesonic.com
Putlocker.com
Depositfiles.com

Other ISPs have blocked some of the sites listed above, while the state-owned BSNL is reported as not yet blocking any. MTNL users report blocking, but only if they use the full web address of a site – omitting www unblocks the site in question.

This lack of consistency across ISPs has led to speculation that the problem is related to routing issues, but that would not adequately explain the presence of the blocking message which is greeting some broadband customers.

Naturally there is a belief that the action is an attempt to crack down on unlawful file-sharing but as yet there has been no official announcement from the authorities. Hayai Broadband India have announced that should they obtain a blocking order from the government, they will publish it on their website.

Inevitably the hot discussion centers around bypassing the restrictions. Some of the suggestions include using secure https:// instead of the usual http:// in a site’s URL, accessing a site by omitting www, and using various web-proxy sites.

Update: Ok, this is a very, very interesting situation. According to Indian news site Medianama, a company called Reliance Big Pictures served cease and desists letters on sites/services unlawfully offering the movie ‘Singham’ which releases in theaters officially tomorrow.

“A John Doe order is given against unidentified people, because the copyright owner doesn’t know who is going to infringe,” Big Pictures VP (Music and Anti Piracy) Sanjay Tandon told Medianama. “We anticipate that certain entities are going to infringe, and the Delhi High Court has granted us a John Doe order.”

It appears that having been served with the order, some ISPs overreacted and blocked entire sites, rather than just the Singham movie.

“Our only appeal with this order is that you cannot make the film available through your network,” added Tandon. “It’s a matter for the ISPs to look into, because it becomes their liability.”

Source: UPDATED: Indian Government Blocks Leading File-Sharing Services

In its quest to stamp out piracy, the MPAA continues to pump money into its lobbying activities in the hope of planting the seeds of legislative change.

While the debate over whether corporations should be allowed to lobby crime-fighting organizations such as the police and FBI will rage on, at least there is an enforced level of transparency which allows the public to see where lobbyists are spending their money.

The MPAA have just made their mandatory disclosure for the first quarter of 2011 and it makes interesting reading.

In total the member companies of the MPAA – Disney, Sony, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Universal – spent $400,000 in the first three months of the year lobbying influential government departments. These included the office of Vice-President Joe Biden, a valuable MPAA ally in 2010 with his mantra of “Piracy Is Theft, Clean and Simple.”

In the filing, which covers the period from January 1st to March 31st, several government departments are listed repeatedly including the U.S Senate, House of Representatives, Homeland Security, Dept. of Justice, FBI, ICE, U.S. Copyright Office and U.S. Trade Representative.

On the back of moves to turn the activity into a felony, it’s no surprise that streaming illegal content featured heavily in the MPAA’s 1st quarter lobbying. Considering the huge effort already underway with domain seizures, many of them streaming-related, Operation in Our Sites remained firmly on the agenda.

Also listed is the issue of “Pay processors role in IP enforcement”, a reference to the developing strategy of strangling the revenue to sites that the MPAA believe are generating income from infringement.

In November 2010, file-hosting service RapidShare was among the first Internet services to be labelled by both the MPAA and RIAA as a so-called “Rogue Site”, a move which forced the cyberlocker service to initiate lobbying of its own.

In 2011 it is evident that Hollywood is continuing to pressure on the Swiss-based company. RapidShare is mentioned several times in the MPAA disclosure report under several headings, not least ‘Rogue Site Legislation’ and ‘Law Enforcement/Crime and Criminal Justice’.

Interestingly, ‘Graduated Response’ is also listed as a lobbying subject, although the U.S. appeared to rule out so-called “3 strikes” regimes earlier this month in response to a United Nations report.

On the educational front, the MPAA is keen to drive home the anti-P2P message to the country’s schools and universities. Equally it is pushing for anti-camcording activities in the Asia-Pacific region plus awareness of counterfeit movie usage at US military bases, a subject we’ve touched on previously.

The MPAA also discussed the anti-piracy company MiMTiD. A DMCA-related controversy connected to that company was covered by TechDirt in February.

The $400,000 spent by the MPAA in the first 3 months of 2011 represents a $30,000 uplift on the same period last year and a $60,000 increase on its spend during the final quarter of 2010.

Source: MPAA Anti-Piracy Lobbying Targets FBI, DOJ, ICE, DHS and Biden

Recently our ISP has taken a drastic action on www.rapidshare.com

All download speed has been FAKAP using rapidshare even though you’re on 4 Mbps you can get only max below 100KB/sec

However there is a tools converting rapidshare.com to ip address ( Claim to be can bypass the throttling )

http://rs2ip.anonymailz.com/?check=0

It seems to be not working for me.

How about you guys?

Please give your comment.TQVM