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.
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RapidShare is in Switzerland. Unless their execs travel to New Zealand, they have nothing to fear.
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Mine was stolen right after I bought it. Who knows who the bastard was that used it? Always a work around
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They're flagging to the community "we want to go out of business"
They're basically saying "uploaders get full speed, free users do not". Which basically means: "help us grow our network with your efforts, but dont' ask us to do anything to actually help you."
nominal payment (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder then if requiring all users to pay a 10c charge would stop piracy completely for site such as this.
Re:nominal payment (Score:5, Insightful)
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where are these mythical $20 DVD's?
most are under $10 and some blu ray's have broken that barrier as well
Re:nominal payment (Score:4, Informative)
where are these mythical $20 DVD's?
Here. [amazon.com] Pick one.
Of, if you DON'T pick just new releases... (Score:5, Interesting)
...you'll find a whole bunch of stuff well under $20. Two of the most popular releases from 2010 - The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (Two-Disc Special Edition) [amazon.com] is $7.78 for the two-disc set and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 [amazon.com] is $4.99. (In fact, it was that price even before December - I bought it as a Christmas present.) New releases are going to be more expensive - you can't blame a for-profit industry from trying to make a bit more money from those people who've gotta have stuff now and are willing to pay a premium instead of waiting six months, can you?
I know people love to whine about how over-priced movies are, and how that justifies your piracy, but seriously, these are two block busters from 2010 for the price of a McDonald's meal. What's it going to take to stop you pirating this stuff?
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.
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.
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Sadly, Slashdot is a very piracy-friendly forum. There are vast numbers of people here with that entitlement complex, whether it be for free music, free movies, cheap broadband that is so unrealistically reduced as to be a cost for the provider, or anything else that (i) they want, and (ii) they don't want to adhere to laws of economics.
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entitlement complexes
You mean like feeling entitled to rake in continued profits from work you did 50 years ago?
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What's it going to take to stop you pirating this stuff?
A DRM free download at around that price. I don't want any more plastic discs hanging around, and I started buying mp3s when Amazon started selling them DRM free. If I could buy a nice mkv file of Harry Potter for $3-5 I'd do it, and so would a lot of other people. But a DRM locked copy from itunes costs $10-15, at least twice the cost of the DVD!
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I know people love to whine about how over-priced movies are, and how that justifies your piracy, but seriously, these are two block busters from 2010 for the price of a McDonald's meal. What's it going to take to stop you pirating this stuff?
I don't actually "pirate stuff" hardly at all, but do you want the real answer?
The first thing to understand is that different people turn to piracy for different reasons. The one you're ostensibly arguing against is this one. [theoatmeal.com] And that is the reason why your argument fails: The problem is not "DVDs should be $10." The problem is that a legitimate copy of a sufficiently recent show or movie is not available. Not for $10, not for $20, not for $50. And by the time it is available on DVD, $20 is no longer an at
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these are two block busters from 2010 for the price of a McDonald's meal.
The most I ever spend at McDonald's is $2.16. Burrito with biscuits and gravy, McDouble with value fry, or occasionally the Mac Wrap ($1.83).
Beverage? I'm not paying a buck fifty for a paper cup full of carbonated sugar water.
I rarely pay $20 for DVDs, either.
However, I will pay $15 at D'Arcy's for corned beef, cabbage, and potatos with a couple of pints of Giunesses. I think it's hilarious that some people eat that expensively at McDo
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Okay, fine. Let's go your way - you can buy both these blockbuster movies and your $2.16 McDonald's burrito/McDouble combinations for the same price as you pay for your meal at D'Arcy's. But you're missing the point (deliberately, I assume).
No, if there were no piracy whatever they'd come up with some other bogus "reason."
Possibly. But we'll never know, will we? The amount of piracy going on gives them all the ammunition they need. The end result is still that my experience on the web is getting rapidly choked because a bunch of geeks decide they're above the law.
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Possibly. But we'll never know, will we? The amount of piracy going on gives them all the ammunition they need.
No, but you can be pretty sure of it since the studies all say that the pirates are their best customers, spending more on media than non-pirates. Attacking your best customers is pretty stupid unless you have an ulterior motive.
I think they fear competition from independents and are using piracy as an excuse to quash competition. The RIAA labels are already an anachronism, and when desktop CGI is
Re:Of, if you DON'T pick just new releases... (Score:5, Funny)
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I'd still rather pay 10c for a fast and simple criminal service that treats me with respect than pay $10 for a legitimate fiddly DVD that treats me like a criminal.
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Those "mythical" $20 DVD's are what nearly any move that isn't at least a couple of years old costs retail. "Most are under $10" only applies to used and bargian-bin sales. But you already knew that.
Vault business model (Score:2)
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walmart? most new movies are 20 as well as all disney movies
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That comic is stupid. People need to stop making up stupid excuses.
OMG I have to get HBO to watch HBO series from HBO who payed millions to produce said show?!?! SHOCKING!! So hard to add HBO to your cable and watch via HBO GO or on demand. Yeah, pricy too, I mean, I've never heard of getting 3 months FREE of HBO when you sign up. Get hbo, watch show on demand, cancel hbo. How is this hard if you want to go legit? This is not "CHANGING YOUR ENTIRE CABLE PACKAGE!!!!!!!one one!!".
No DVD's to buy? Wait. They
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That comic is stupid. People need to stop making up stupid excuses.
No the comic is factually actuate. When people want to buy something, with money in hand. Give them the opportunity to buy it, when they have it with the money in their hand. Otherwise, they'll go anywhere else for it, even if they download it.
People won't wait. Why should they, welcome to the digital age. Does it magically take data longer to show up online when it's being stamped for retail sale too? No, no it doesn't. They'll figure it out eventually, that impulse buying = more money. Until then,
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The people that want tv and movies streaming via their computer are still in the minority.
It's getting there... but the user base is not in place yet for a company to fully commit to it.
I'm sorry, but it is complete bull. It's completely about making money. Maybe a decade ago it was hard to get things into an ondemand service, but now with iTunes and Hulu and Netflix all competing to get TV shows and movies up ASAP, the only thing delaying them is not a technical issue, but suppliers unwilling to cut into their current market on TV.
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Yup... not to mention the false dichotomy that they must fully commit to one or the other. Did they have to shut down CD sales in order to start selling on iTunes? Hell no. Most everybody I talk to today know how to download, some don't want to or only do it a little but if you offered a legal service you'd have plenty people signing up.
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I'd still rather pay 10c for a fast and simple criminal service that treats me with respect
Right. Because stealing stuff shows immense levels of respect to the distributors and artists.
I'm showing my age, I know, but I still believe two wrongs don't make a right.
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Because stealing stuff
Yeah, I think stealing stuff is pretty bad because the one that had their property stolen loses it.
Copying, on the other hand...
but I still believe two wrongs don't make a right.
It's quite a different situation if a person doesn't believe that what they're doing is wrong to begin with.
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Yeah, I think stealing stuff is pretty bad because the one that had their property stolen loses it.
Copying, on the other hand...
When I see someone reduced to arguing on semantics ("what is stealing?") then I know they have no legitimate justification.
It's quite a different situation if a person doesn't believe that what they're doing is wrong to begin with.
Justification of sociopathy. Good one. That's pretty weak.
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When I see someone reduced to arguing on semantics ("what is stealing?") then I know they have no legitimate justification.
Sounds like a non sequitur to me. The fact that I argued "semantics" does not mean that I have no "justification" (I don't believe such a thing is necessary, though). I simply tried to correct you on a point you made that I thought was wrong.
Justification about what? Whether or not a justification is "legitimate" is, I believe, subjective. Can you logically prove that someone arguing "semantics" indicates that they have no "legitimate justification"? What if someone used the same exact logic that you used a
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I just don't believe in absolute morals
At all? So someone who decides to murder a complete stranger, someone just riding the bus and reading their book, who is doing nothing other than sitting there, is not violating any morals in your opinion?
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So someone who decides to murder a complete stranger, someone just riding the bus and reading their book, who is doing nothing other than sitting there, is not violating any morals in your opinion?
Any morals? Well, they might violate an individual person's morals, but I don't believe they're violating some sort of universal morals (that come from some unknown source and have no effect on anything).
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Semantics is the meaning of words. How can correctly defining words invalidate an argument?
It doesn't. But aruging about the meaning of words is avoiding making any cogent argument.
When I see someone complaining about "arguing on semantics" it's usually because they've used an incorrect word, either through ignorance or as propaganda, and can't bring themselves to admit they are wrong. After all, if their point was correct as stated, they could simply explain it.
My point is that if the person rebutting me has a point that is correct or legitimate, they should make that point instead of taking refuge in arguing about the meanings of words.
As for your sociopathy comment, someone disagreeing with you about what is wrong is not necessarily a sociopath.
Of course not. Someone who argues that they can do anything they like because it feels good and they don't care if society says it's wrong, however, is verging on being the definition of a sociopath.
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Sigh. Pointing out the flaws in my argument is, indeed, a form of rebuttal. So far, that hasn't occurred. Look closely and you'll see that all that has been done is to argue about meaningless drivel, not any actual substantive concept. Why would I bother continuing that?
You used a propaganda term in an attempt to make copying seem unambiguously wrong. If you have a point that is correct or legitimate, you can make it using the correct words. I doubt you're even going to try that.
Please, englighten me - where did I use propaganda? I think you're twisting the meaning of the word to suit your own purposes.
If you have a point, make it. Don't keep on complaining about the words I'm using. Otherwise, yep, you're right - I
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You say you are offended
Nope
that they think you will infringe their copyright
Nope
so to teach them how wrong they are
Nope
you are going to infringe their copyright?
Nope
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I wonder then if requiring all users to pay a 10c charge would stop piracy completely for site such as this.
actually most pirates that use sites like rapidshare are premium users, why do you think a lot of people cried when megaupload was closed also the free download speed is already below 200k most of the times, there is no point in using them if they are gonna be slower than torrent
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.. well, since the number 1 reason for paying usenet news access is downloading warez I highly doubt 10c charge would do anything.
Re:nominal payment (Score:4, Interesting)
But then their payment information is connected to piracy in a verifiable way, which would scare most of them off due to possible legal problems.
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The only thing is, it's not the downloaders who are the infringers, it's those who uploaded the file to begin with and in the EU, that's the key difference. It's still legal to download files and at $0.10 I'd be quite willing to download any album I'm interested in as that would be far cheaper then Amazon/iTunes or any other Legitimate vendor because I don't give a rats ass if the label looses money or not. It's their fault for not providing things in a format I'm willing to pay for at a price I'm willing t
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I don't give a rats ass if the label looses money or not. It's their fault for not providing things in a format I'm willing to pay for at a price I'm willing to pay.
Not sure if serious
Re:nominal payment (Score:4, Funny)
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It's still legal to download files
This doesn't sound right. I mean, people might not sue because damages are so much lower, but I feel like going out there and downloading a copy of a file you know is probably not an official download source doesn't sound legal at all.
Can anyone confirm/deny this claim?
TANSTAFFL (Score:1)
I'm surprised it took this long.
It would be nice if they had a "tiered" throttling system, something like:
The first 1MB to any IP address in a 1-hour period gets throttled to a medium speed, say, 100KB/sec, and the rest gets throttled more. Throttle anything over 10MB per hour to painfully slow speeds.
This way, people just grabbing one small (under 1MB) file in a 1-hour period don't suffer too much.
I do like the plan they have to avoid throttling though.
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I've had people send me legit RapidShare links to stuff like data files and such. Explaining to my boss that I'd need to pay $1 or whatever the daily fee is to download this file from the customer just because it hap
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1MB unthrottled: How fast are the Intertubes today? Probably 3 seconds for most users.
1MB at 100KB/sec = 10 seconds. That 7 seconds is enough to be annoying but not painful.
1MB at 30Kbits/sec (less than 4 KB/sec) as RapidShare is doing now = 4-5 minutes. 4-5 minutes per MB is painful, or perhaps nostalgic.
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eDonkey (Score:2)
has died then has it - I thought this was where all the kids get their dodgy stuff from ?
Just like everyone else (Score:1)
So, they're now doing what most of their competitors have been doing for years. This is certainly newsworthy.
Cause if there's one thing non-pirate users want (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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.
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Unfotunately I've found that up.to netload, turbobit, and several others also have the same speed issues as RapidShare.
Shame, because those are all legal for me to use in my country, whereas torrents are a bit more of a grey area (downloading copyrighted material is 100% legal in my country, uploading is not) meaning that the slower speeds actually pushes people like me from the legal practice of downloading, back to a grey area of torrenting.
It wasn't bad enough already? (Score:2)
Wow, this on top of how shitty Rapidshare already was? At this point they could only make it worse by forcing you to enter a CAPTCHA presented in the form of one of those "stare to see the letters" puzzles, shown right in the middle of goatse's anus.
Why people ever used services like Rapidshare and Megaupload, I'll never understand.
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How I've used mediafire (Score:2)
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Say I'm working on a computer program and I want to send copies to my beta testers. I'd upload a copy to mediafire and give only my beta testers the URL.
Dropbox?
Or say I shot a video and I want to share it with family members, but I don't want to post it publicly on YouTube because the video might contain some copyrighted music that happened to be playing where I shot it.
It's not really a problem for incidental music if you're non-monetizing your videos. Youtube will just put links to the music on your video page. Now if you were one of those people basically uploading songs with a static image of the album art, that's another story.
This video is not available in your country (Score:2)
Dropbox?
What makes Dropbox any different from RS/MU/MF in this respect?
It's not really a problem for incidental music if you're non-monetizing your videos. Youtube will just put links to the music on your video page.
Except in some countries where viewers will get "This video is not available in your country" (paraphrased) because a particular country's state-sponsored monopoly collecting society wants more money for each view than advertisers are willing to pay. And I thought a user in the YouTube Partner Program had to clear the rights to all the videos on his channel before monetizing even one.
won't people just lie? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Go through any registration database for a product that doesn't give something useful or desirable to the user for registering. If you do, you will find tons of entries Like Guy Anyman, 1234 My Street, Yourtown USA 98765
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i personally feel sorry for all the spam i've caused me@you.com to receive
Anonymous payments (Score:2)
"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.
Except for those methods of payment that don't force you to give out any personal details at all?
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Re:Anonymous payments (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some pre-paid credit cards can be bought over-the-counter and don't have your address on them.
If you pay them in cash I don't think the
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Simple solution (Score:2)
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Associating an (IP, time) pair to a customer (Score:2)
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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.
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.
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You misunderstand the point of copyright.
Before the invention of the printing press, creators had some level of assurance that their works would not be widely copied by unauthorized parties by virtue of the fact that copying was so tedious and error prone, that the sheer difficulties involved in making a copy kept unauthorized copies from being problematic for creators.
After the printing press was developed, things shifted somewhat. Creators still wanted the exclusivity that they formerly had, and wou
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This is incorrect. Copyright was created to give people incentive to publish in the first place, so that society could benefit from a continual influx of new published works.
Sadly, this is not what many people think of copyright today.
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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.
Dropbox too (Score:2, Funny)
Has anyone in the history of the world ever paid for a RapidShare account to use it for downloading non-pirated content?
Has anyone in the history of Dropbox, one of RapidShare's competitors, ever paid for a Dropbox account [dropbox.com]?
Yes, people pay for Dropbox and happily (Score:2)
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Paying for services is a lot like that - what do you need to invest to do it yourself, how much will it cost to buy it, what's the ROI, is it worth it.
...how much will it cost to buy it all over again once your existing provider goes mammaries-up...
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If a company is making assurances that it's cash-flow positive and sustainable and that investments would be for growth rather than funding operations, that's significant. It doesn't guarantee that the company will stay around, but it at least means there's a smaller chance that it's going to end up in
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Do you know what "willful" means? The first definition is "said or done on purpose; deliberate". Which fits perfectly with PP's usage. You're probably thinking of the second definition ("obstinately bent on having one's own way"), but that's not the only, or even the most common, meaning.
It's really funny (bordering on ironic) how many self-appointed "grammar nazis" are completely ignorant of polysemy, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of common English nouns and verbs display it. It's eve
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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> maybe if I describe it somebody will chime in
The Man from Earth (2007). I stumbled across it on cable last years and was pleasantly surprised.
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Thanks a lot! I was wondering whether somebody knew it, because it sounded like a movie I'd like to watch.
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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.
Only in their wettest dreams will they be able to shut down all the thousands of sites that let you share files. RapidShare is trying to (a) not be next in line and (b) score points if they should try to take them down. And if they happen to get more paying customers while avoiding a lawsuit, that's killing two birds with one stone.
Slower downloads will stop piracy? (Score:2)
Back in the late 90s, I knew people who would leave their modems connected overnight on a dedicated line, with a download manager running, just to be sure they got the latest copy of whatever it was they were after.
Slowing up your downloads is just going to make people take longer to grab something, or they'll busily try to find a way to circumvent your "protection." Or, they'll move on to some other service or method, partially collapsing your business model.
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In economics terms, file hosting is close to perfect competition. It does not take much money to rent a server at some colo, set up a web page, and upload and download files. So if one host decides to have crappy service, there are plenty of others to step in and replace them. There are also two other major forms of competition at the moment. One is P2P networks such as BitTorrent, and the other is "Sneakernet", ie local distribution. Make online distribution hard enough, and people will pass around bu
Heh (Score:3)
And in other news, the MPAA is fighting piracy by releasing movies that aren't worth copying, thus destroying piracy at the source.
Dying business model (Score:2)
Really, the 'direct public download' bushiness model is dying. They are far too open for attack by the latest anti-whatever craze.
The future is distributed storage with encrypted storage and transfers. Not sure how companies like mega and rapid will make a buck off it without opening themselves back up to the same risks, but that is the direction we are heading.
Ah, the joys of "free cloud storage"... (Score:2)
I wonder how many legitimate file sharing customers of Megaupload (like indie rock bands and open source software projects) started moving their files over the Rapidshare, only to get screwed AGAIN by these download transfer caps?
I wonder which free storage service is going to be next to cave to legal threats from the **AA's. Dropbox? MediaFire? SkyDrive?
Spending the time to set up a private FTP server of your own for private file transfers suddenly doesn't sound like a bad idea anymore...
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Sorry, no.