Gema vs internet service business

It is a risk for a company to provide services to the internet when other companies and service providers don't understand the game. We watch now GEMA, the German music collective society, which goes after the Swiss rapidshare.com because content protected by copyright was hosted by them. Rapidshare is blamed by second hand media reports as a "piracy plattform". A quick look at their homepage will inform an uninitiated participant. e.g. a journalist, about the nature of their services. Rapidshare offers huge upload space for individuals, a virtual private upload space. We sometimes speak of an Internet harddisc. In the press release of GEMA it is correctly described as:

Deren Geschäftsmodell basiert darauf, Speicherkapazitäten zur Verfügung zu stellen, damit Nutzer beliebige Inhalte in diese Speicher einspeisen und anderen Nutzern öffentlich zugänglich machen können. ...Die nunmehr von dem Landgericht Köln erlassenen einstweiligen Verfügungen machen hingegen ganz klar deutlich, dass "die Tatsache, dass der Dienstbetreiber die Inhalte nicht selbst einstellt, sondern diese durch Nutzer hochgeladen werden" rechtlich nichts daran ändert, dass die Dienstbetreiber für die im Rahmen des Dienstes stattfindenden Urheberrechtsverletzungen haften.

Rough almost literal translation:
Their business model is based on making available storage space for user upload of content which is made available to other users. ... However, the recent preliminary injunctions imposed by Cologne district court stress that "the point, that service providers didn't provide the content themselves but by user upload" doesn't change anything from the legal side: service providers have to take account for copyright infringement in the course of their services.

Imagine a paper production company would be responsible for the illegal use of the paper for writing offensive texts. If the alledged teaching of the district court Köln is applied on a large scale that would be the end of internet services at large. In Germany so called "Mitstörerhaftung" imposes strong restrictions and risks on the development of German web companies.