Just two months after file hosting website Megaupload was shut down by the United States government following copyright infringement charges, a German court has ruled that RapidShare, a website that provides a similar service, must begin monitoring for illegal content uploaded by users. RapidShare will be forced to implement some sort of system that constantly checks for any copyrighted content that may be uploaded, and remove it immediately.

This ruling comes after three separate lawsuits against RapidShare, from two book publishers and one music publisher, all going against the website. RapidShare has been known in the past to host loads of illegal content since it allows end users to upload very large files and then share them with others.