Publishers win injunction against file sharing website

GERMANY – A German court has approved an injunction filed by six academic publishers against the file-sharing website RapidShare. The injunction requires RapidShare to implement filtering technology to prevent the uploading of textbooks published by the plaintiffs – Bedford, Freeman & Worth, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, The McGraw-Hill Companies and Pearson. The lawsuit was filed on 4 February 2010 and concerned 148 books the publishers had found freely available on RapidShare. RapidShare has said that the preliminary injunction was made without representation from RapidShare, and that it will appeal the decision.