Google and Microsoft Sued for Facilitating Copyright Infringement

The copyright infringement lawsuits have gone beyond infamous p2p networks and torrent sites and reached giants like Google and Microsoft.

Blues Destiny Records, a small US record company has filed a lawsuit against both companies for copyright infringement for allegedly providing results that facilitate the discovery of illegal content on the file-hosting service RapidShare.

The label claims that Google and Microsoft are liable for more than two dozen songs being illegally downloaded from RapidShare which has been also sued for violating the copyright law as, says Blues Destiny, it "has built its business by knowingly facilitating and enabling the trade of illegal unauthorized copyrighted content for its own profit."

Blues Destiny points to Google and Bing as being just as guilty for the illegal file sharing of the music it owns as RapidShare since they provide the means by which people can locate and download unauthorized material.

According to the MediaPostNews “The Digital Millennium Copyright Act “safe harbor” provisions say that search engines like Google and Bing are immune from copyright liability as long as they remove infringing material upon request, but it's not clear whether those safe harbors would apply here.”

The lawsuit was brought this week in federal court in the northern district of Florida; so far neither Google nor Microsoft has commented it.