RapidShare Fighting Piracy By Slowing Download Speeds 154
An anonymous reader writes "File hosting sites have been under increased pressure since the shutdown of Megaupload — both from law enforcement and from the sudden influx of new users. RapidShare, already dealing with a reputation as a facilitator of piracy, has now instituted a policy they hope will drive pirates away: download speed caps for its free service. According to TorrentFreak, 'RapidShare says that there is a direct link between free users of file-hosting services and copyright infringement. Those who like to pirate prefer not to pay, the company believes, not least because they want to avoid connecting their personal payment details to a copyright-infringing cyberlocker account. Now, there will be those who say that however RapidShare dress it up, the company will be aware that the restrictions will drive users to their premium services to get better speeds. But interestingly RapidShare is now offering ways for users to get faster download speeds without paying a dime — providing those uploading the original files they’re trying to access do some work.'"
Alternative career for RapidShare execs (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tightrope_walking [wikipedia.org]
Seems like they have experience.
Re:nominal payment (Score:5, Insightful)
Cause if there's one thing non-pirate users want (Score:5, Insightful)
won't people just lie? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cause if there's one thing non-pirate users wan (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. Rapidshare is only driving away the "impatient" pirates. They are delaying the inevitable because ultimately, the works is still just as pirated regardless of how long it took to obtain.
My guess is that they are either secretly hoping to boost premium sales (they would NOT get away with throttling paying customers) or to do "something" in order to prevent Megaupload's fate from repeating with them.
the direct link (Score:5, Insightful)
> there is a direct link between free users of file-hosting services and copyright infringement.
There is also a direct link between internet users and copyright infringement. There is also a direct link between prople exchanging information and copyright infringement. And so on.
Copyright is for-profit censorship. As soon as you have two people exchanging information, be it on the net, by pendrives, even exchanging books, as soon as you cut out the middlemen, it will probably be some kind of infringement.
The problem with this, what they call infringement is _normal human behavior_ that shouldnt be infringement in the first place. As soon as people get together, they exchange information. Declaring parts of this information exchange somebody elses "property" and trying to censor it by basically spying on every information exchange between two people, is censorship straight from the darkest surveillance state nightmares. The worst case scanario. It is basically north korea, but not with respect to "political information" but with respect to "proprietary information". Censorship is censorship, whatever paltry excuse you can come up with for it.
We're fighting piracy, honest! (Score:4, Insightful)
Has anyone in the history of the world ever paid for a RapidShare account to use it for downloading non-pirated content?
These guys are no different than the ones who offered newsgroup access for X amount per month (and by the way, here are all these great tools for managing large binary downloads should you happen to need them).
Rapidshare's business model has always been about making the free download option as obnoxious as humanly possible. "Pay us money and you can download this random file which may or may not be copyrighted at full speed instead of playing capcha games and waiting all day for your file to download and then have it stall at 98%" This is nothing new or unexpected.
IANAL, but that seems like a refreshing admission of legal liability for being willful accessories to copyright infringement.
Re:nominal payment (Score:0, Insightful)
where are these mythical $20 DVD's?
most are under $10 and some blu ray's have broken that barrier as well
Hush, child, our entire narrative depends on outlandish hyperbole.
Re:the direct link (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a direct link between eating High Fructose Corn Syrup and Murder.
Every Murderer in the USA consumed HFCS at one point in his or her life.
MAFIAA doesn't care (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does RapidShare think this will give them cover over piracy? The MAFIAA doesn't care; they're happy to burn down the Internet to protect their business.
The MAFIAA also don't really care about piracy, despite all their noise about it. Their goal is to maintain high prices and the business model that they know and control. Piracy is just a means to manipulate the publics attitude and justify the use of extreme measures by the government. Which for RapidShare means that they can't win unless they become part of the establishment ... but Hollywood needs enemies to fight more then allies to share the wealth with.
Re:Anonymous payments (Score:4, Insightful)
It's basically marketing BS. (Score:5, Insightful)
At a guess, this is just marketing BS being used to disguise an attempt to get more paid users. Rapidshare have form in this area - they rebranded themselves the "Anti-Waiting Company" at the same time as increasing the amount of time free users have to wait for downloads and increasing their premium prices.
Re:Cause if there's one thing non-pirate users wan (Score:4, Insightful)
They can put whatever positive, law-cooperating spin on it that they want, but the real reason is simply that Rapidshare no longer has any competition to drive up their free download speeds.
Their single largest competitor (Megaupload) just dropped off the map and all their other competitors have either blocked the US or dropped any free support whatsoever.
Re:Of, if you DON'T pick just new releases... (Score:5, Insightful)
As I commented in a previous story [slashdot.org], people are bringing this on themselves, and also ruining the internet for the innocent bystanders like me.
I guess it is perspective - I feel like people willing to feed the RIAA/MPAA infinite copyright machine are ruining the internet for innocent bystanders like me.