German Court Fines Rapidshare $34 Million

German collection agency GEMA, which brought the suit against Rapidshare, claims that the decision made in its favor will set a precedent for other similar file-sharing cases, as the court also ruled that precautions that were supposedly taken by Rapidshare and other similar sites were not "sufficient enough" to prevent copyright breaches through their services.

"The judgment states that the hosting service itself is now responsible for making sure that none of the music tracks concerned are distributed via its platform in the future. This means that the copyright holder is no longer required to perform the ongoing and complex checks," GEMA said in a statement following the proceedings.

But Rapidshare isn't taking the verdict quite as seriously.

"We do not consider the court's decision to be a breakthrough," said Bobby Chang, COO of Rapidshare AG. "As other proceedings in similar disputes with GEMA have shown, there is considerable disparity amongst the individual courts in some cases."