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Filed under: Internet, News

File sharing service RapidShare ordered to filter content

Rapidshare
Rapidshare is a service that makes it easy for users to upload and share files with a large number of people. It can come in handy whether you want to send a large file to a friend who has an email service with file attachment size limits or you want to share files with visitors to your website without paying a hefty web hosting bill.

But Rapidshare has never gained the respect that sites like YouSendIt have. YouSendIt provided a similar service, but it's aimed at sending files to just a handful of users. RapidShare, on the other hand, has become popular with users who upload copyrighted software, music, and movies. And today the company could be paying the price of allowing users to get away with those activities.

A German court is ordering Rapidshare to remove about 5,000 songs from its servers. The lawsuit was brought by GEMA, a group representing copyright holders. The court has ruled that Rapidshare must begin filtering content to prevent users from sharing any songs from artists covered by GEMA. The court estimates the value of those songs at about 24 million Euros (roughly $34 million).

Of course, it's pretty difficult to filter content on a site like Rapidshare, where users can easily ZIP files, change file names, or make other small changes to trick any filtering software that's put in place. I guess we'll have to see if Rapidshare ties to take any steps toward implementing content filters, and if the court decides that a good faith effort is good enough. Or maybe Rapidshare will just appeal the ruling.

[via TechCrunch]

Filed under: Internet, E-mail, Web services, Google

German Gmail could be a goner

GmailDespite the stupid alliteration in the title, German Gmail users could face a real threat to their service. The threatened shutdown is In response to a new German law that will require email services to keep personally identifiable information for account holders.

For all the information Google tracks about its users, the company doesn't require a home address, phone number, or anything else that can tie your email account to an individual person. Since Google makes its money off of advertising, anonymized and aggregated data is more useful.

The new law is framed as an anti-terrorism measure, but Google says it violates the company's privacy policy. What's funny is that Google's recently come under fire for holding too much private user data. Sometimes you just can't win.

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Kids, Blogging, Web services, Social Software

Teenie Bopper social network site Piczo gets a larger vocabulary

piczo goes internationalOne thing that tends to take a while in the Web 2.0 market is the expansion to non-English speaking markets. Even Google is guilty of waiting a while to open up services for non-English speaking residents of the world.

Piczo, the social network that specializes in the teen market, has finally expanded to include other languages. The second place superstar in the social space for teens now has international versions for users in Germany, France and Spain.

It's a move that hasn't come soon enough for the over 1.2 million users in Germany alone. Piczo's current user base is approx. 25 million users worldwide.

[via webware]

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google

Quaero: The official search engine of the European Union

Jacques
ChiracIn his 2006 New Year's address, French President Jacques Chirac apparently focused on Quaero, a new search engine being built by "some of the top tech labs in France and Germany." The project is ambitious, to say the least, reportedly providing "an array of multimedia tools for identifying and indexing images, sound and text," including "a powerful translating tool which will be able to 'understand' audio as well as text," and available on mobile devices and digital TVs. Beyond that, the article is tantalizingly vague, and includes this less-than-promising passage: "The ambitious project will probably not be available anytime in the near future. Quaero is still in the earliest stages of development, so early that none of the major players have yet ventured a guess as to how much the project might cost. When Quaero does launch, it will have a great deal of catching up to do." Good luck with that, Chirac.

[Via Slashdot]

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