How RapidShare Plans To Avoid MegaUpload's Fate

concealment writes "On November 27, RapidShare will start putting a tight cap on outbound downloads for its free users. Paid members will still have 30 gigabytes in outbound downloads per day, but everybody else will be capped at one gigabyte. The change is expected to further deter pirates from using RapidShare to distribute copyright material on a large scale."

This sounds like a money grab

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would this reduce piracy more than it would reduce legitimate uses?

Re:This sounds like a money grab

[kontos]

Probably wont, but it is win/win. They can "do something" about the pirates, and get a bump in revenue from the few pirates that will pay for an account to get around the restrictions.

Re:Get your own web site

[JackieBrown]

Some roms from my android tablet are 300-400 MB and are hosted on rapidshare.

Re:This sounds like a money grab

[Anonymous Coward]

Who registers accounts with real personal data?

I don't want to play the "nothing to hide" card, but normal people do.

No content worth anything on Rapidshare

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

If I come across content that is served by Rapidshare, I don't bother getting it because its usually not worth the effort to try and get something off that POS service.

Seriously, BitTorrent is more then adequate to share both legit and illegal content without BS pay walls and content throttling. Why anybody uses RapidShare or MegaUpload to share content in this day and age speaks to a group of ex-geeks that were relevant back in the early 90's but haven't learned or done anything new since then. its like people that share files using RAR to break them into a thousand pieces because of old Usenet group limitations, absolutely no point to do that in this day an age of broadband and torrent services.

RapidShare and other file download services are like AOL where the last few remnants of old-school geeks and vapid Luddites still believe they need some kind of portal to access web content at a time when torrent and cloud services has become the most prevalent way to share any content.

Re:This sounds like a money grab

[pla]

One who needs some manner by which they can pay for that which they're registering.

Prepaid VISA cards FTW - No one online gets my "real" contact info unless I need something physically shipped to me - And even then, I almost always have it shipped to my work address c/o my phone extension - Technically enough to ID me with two court orders (merchant and my employer), but good luck otherwise.


Did you miss the part about paying for more upload space/bandwidth, or do you seriously think RapidShare will accept payments via throwing a plain manila envelope full of unmarked bills off a bridge at 2am?

You do realize this conversation involves a company that used to (maybe they still do, haven't looked in years) accept payments through some sketchy Russian "bill it to your phone via SMS" processor, right?

Re:This sounds like a money grab

[Anonymous Coward]

...BitTorrent? I know it's not actually a host (more just a system to make you the host) but I've personally used torrents almost exclusively over the years for file sharing and never ran into the slightest hoops or hurdles. And I'm saying this for legal and, naturally, pirated files I've uploaded and downloaded.

Won't save them

[Hentes]

The example of Megaupload showed that you don't actually have to be convicted. An accusation is enough to ruin a business.

Re:This sounds like a money grab

[beep54]

Uh, have you actually tried to use RS? It already seems as tho the interface was designed by insane, autistic children. For this alone, people have stopped using it in droves.