Rapidshare Trying To Convert Pirates Into Customers 227
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store [to which links containing infringing material will redirect]. The plan is an attempt to bridge the gap between copyright holders and users of the site who distribute infringing material. Similar to many other companies that operate in the file-sharing business, Rapidshare often finds itself caught between two fires. On the one hand it wants to optimize the user experience, but by doing so they have to respect the rights holders to avoid being continuously dragged to court. To ease the minds of some major executives in the entertainment industry, Rapidshare's General Manager Bobby Chang has revealed an ambitious plan through which copyright holders could benefit from the file-hosting service. At the same time, Chang says that his company will target uploaders of copyrighted material — whom he refers to as criminals — more aggressively."
Um, No? (Score:5, Funny)
The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store
If they are in fact pirates then trying to setup a store for them is probably a waste of time. Though I must commend them for nicely putting everything in one location and inviting pirates to come for a visit. Rocket surgery, indeed.
It could be extortion (Score:3, Funny)
Hey copyright holders! Would you like to sell copies of your IP at our online store? You'll get a (small) cut, but at least you'll get something! And, if you don't play ball, maybe uploaded versions of your files take a few weeks to get deleted. Maybe they don't get deleted at all. You wouldn't want that to happen, right?
Re:This will fail (Score:3, Funny)
> Even World of Goo had piracy rate of around 90%
HELLO! Please stop it with your statistics already.
ANyone wiuth an IQ over 12 knows stats prove nothing.
You cannot measure the piracy rate.
Even your linked article says as much.
The other main factor around piracy is just the hording factor. Even back in the amiga days I knew people who just got pirated stuff to say they had it. They never used it, just had it. How is that harming anyone? (hey you could have put pics of a mokey's arese on a disk and told them it was x great new games and they would never know the difference),
Wait a moment, I though I had a point but I forget it now....