In what publishers are calling a significant copyright victory, a German court has approved an injunction filed by six academic publishers -- including four founding members of the electronic textbook consortium CourseSmart -- against the file-sharing company RapidShare AG. The injunction prohibits the company from giving away digital copies of dozens of scholarly titles.
The publishers hope the court's decision will put a stop to RapidShare’s practice of providing free access to 148 e-books, most of them academic. In a resolution issued this month, the three-judge court warned that violations could cost the company up to €250,000 on top of the €7.2 million in legal fees for the plaintiffs.
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“This is a big win, because RapidShare is one of the primary file sharing sites in the world where copyrighted material is being routinely downloaded for free,” said Tom Allen, president of the Association of American Publishers. “RapidShare has become a huge problem for the publishing industry.”
In addition to Wiley, the plaintiffs in the case are publishing giants Cengage Learning, Pearson Education, McGraw-Hill, Elsevier, and Bedford Freeman & Worth.
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