German Book Publishers Want to Add Rapidshare to ISP Blacklist

Two days ago, we pointed to a story about the German government forcing ISPs to agree to a web filtering program in the country. There were fears that the filters would be used as a tool for censorship – it clearly didn’t take long for that to happen.

Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes

A report from German news site Heise.de (German) says that book publishers in Germany are demanding that the famous one-click hosting site Rapidshare be put on the national blacklist. An essential part of the report was translated by p2p-blog which features this:

“I don’t see any other way than access controls to get to platforms like these that are based in foreign countries,” said Boersenverein chief counsel Christian Sprang according to heise.de. ISPs should charge their customers for the costs of instituting these block lists. Sprang also called one-click-hosters like Rapidshare part of the “Internet mafia”, and complained that ISPs would finance these services with ad buys on their sites.

The report also reminds us that the copyright industry attempted to add file-sharing websites to a blacklist already. We have noted a similar case over a year ago where the copyright industry in Germany was turned down by the government to retain the information of all those who access copyrighted materials for the 6 month period for investigation purposes.

Clearly, this is a case where the fears are realized over the potential abuse of the new internet filters in Germany. In this case, it was barely a day before the copyright industry wanted to utilize the new found power for their bottom line. It leads one to wonder how many other incumbent industries are currently lobbying the government to be able to use the blacklists for their own financial interests.

Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.