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How RapidShare Plans To Avoid MegaUpload's Fate

Posted by samzenpus on from the easy-now dept.

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."

23 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. This sounds like a money grab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    1. Re:This sounds like a money grab by kontos · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      SM MBL-VIR looking 4 SIG 4 LTR. must be DDF, no 420, SD ok.
    2. Re:This sounds like a money grab by Urban+Garlic · · Score: 2

      Conjecture on my part, but when you pay for an account, you give them some information, so that they can get their money. To a non-infringing free downloader, the cap is an inconvenience, and some fraction of them will be willing to pay to make it go away. To a copyright-infringing free downloader, paying to remove the cap requires them to identify, and possibly incriminate, themselves, so it's more of an obstacle.

      This explanation is incomplete, of course, since presumably the uploader is also on the hook for copyright violation, and you have to register an account to upload anything (I think), but there are few uploaders and many downloaders, so the explanation above could still work on average.
       

      --
      2*3*3*3*3*11*251
    3. Re:This sounds like a money grab by leromarinvit · · Score: 4, Informative

      This explanation is incomplete, of course, since presumably the uploader is also on the hook for copyright violation, and you have to register an account to upload anything (I think), but there are few uploaders and many downloaders, so the explanation above could still work on average.

      Who registers accounts with real personal data?

      This post brought to you by Mr. Jesus Christ, Downing Street 10, Washington DC, Russia.

      --
      Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
    4. Re:This sounds like a money grab by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Funny

      Who registers accounts with real personal data?

      I *always* do, it's a matter of principle.

      I know what you're thinking - YES, high school (and Jr. High for that matter) was a bitch for me, what with "Hey PISS this and PISS that..."

      All I can say is that it made me a better person with thicker skin. This helped when I joined the military - Recruit PISS, Airman PISS, and finally, Sgt PISS...

      But I used the GI Bill to get ahead, and all you asshats can now call me Professor PISS, if you want t decent grade. To my cook and maid and gardener, I'm Mr. PISS.

      But my friends just call me Frosty P...

      And I *NEVER* misrepresent my bona fides on line. Never.

      --
      If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    5. Re:This sounds like a money grab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not exactly. Read this move carefully:

      In the future RapidShare will use a classic hosting model which means that not only the storage space but also the traffic created will be paid solely by the owner of the file. The prices will not change. With RapidPro you automatically have unlimited traffic for your own downloads of your files and the downloads by your contacts. Additionally you have 30 GB public traffic per day. The recipients of your files have no download limitations whatsoever regardless of if they have RapidPro, a free account or no account at all! [rapidshare.com]

      They're really limiting the total downloads of a file by people who aren't in your contacts list. So really you need to pay for an account and get other uploaders to add you to their contact list, otherwise you'll still get snocked trying to download other's files when they reach the daily cap.

    6. Re:This sounds like a money grab by SkinnyChick · · Score: 2

      Yes, I also always use my real information when registering on websites. Like you said, it's a matter of principle.

    7. Re:This sounds like a money grab by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 2

      prepaid credit card purchased with cash

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    8. Re:This sounds like a money grab by bfandreas · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It might be a money grab. But riddle me this, holy Antisharkspray.
      Legit services will do this to you:

      Steam will cut you off of your sizeable and paid for and possibly extensive games library simply for moving into another region.
      Amazon will cut you off of your whole Kindle library simply for moving into another region.

      This is not even for real but only contractual law since publishing rights still honour the outmoded notion of country borders.
      Would you accept if you were to move to Europe to forfeit everything you ever bought on Kindle, Steam, or any other sevice?

      Copyright stuff has moved beyond the usual 100 years after creator's death + Disney shenanigans into the crazy realm of publishing rights into however the world got carved up into publishing rights areas.

      I for one have deDRMed my whole Kindle-bought Batman collection just in case I might want to move away and if I put it onto Rapidshare just to protect my investment then it shouldn't be viewed as outlawnessnessitude but a failure of copyright law. Took me a whole weekend. Which in turn made me realise I spend too much on Batman.
      Also, Batman.
      Copyrightpublisherlaw shouldn't stand a chance of a snowball in hell but it instead thrives like The Penguin in Nomansland. How come?
      Comply?
      COMPLY!

      Sorry, try as I might, the pirates offer the better service.

      While I deDRMed my Batman collection I went on search for my favourite childhood radio show. Amazon had an offer for the first 4 shows of 40. The second episode cost 30€ from "affiliiates". Nada, zip, zilch for the next 36 episodes. So I went for another online shop. Same misery, less cutthroat. 36 episodes not published. And even if they were, it still would have been 10€ per episode. Pay 400€ for stuff I recorded from radio to tape as a kid? I could afford that but guess who took to Teh Mighty Internets to torrent that stuff from kids who managed to have backups of their old tapes? Worse even still, the originals got lost and they tried to restore it from amateurs who still had recordings in their attic.


      Current copyright reality is worse than the fire in the Library of Alexandria. Copy that floppy and shoot a lawyer.

      I beg of you, just because somebody carved up the world into publishing areas and only stuff that will offer short term yield will get archived(read: put into the back catalogue) copy the hell out of that stuff. Future generations will thank you.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    9. Re:This sounds like a money grab by pla · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

    10. Re:This sounds like a money grab by jovius · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Incidentally by the way, at the modern Library of Alexandria resides the mirror of the Internet Archive.

      You are not alone in commenting about the service. Valve's Gabe Newell has said "In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem."

    11. Re:This sounds like a money grab by Runaway1956 · · Score: 2

      The flaw in your theory, is that no one has been convicted of DOWNLOADING stuff like this, to my knowledge. It's the people who SHARE that get raped by RIAA and their ilk. All of those huge settlement cases we've read about involved UPLOADING. So many people fail to understand that torrents and other P2P clients upload and download at the same time, unless you dick around in the settings.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    12. Re:This sounds like a money grab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ...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.

    13. Re:This sounds like a money grab by Solandri · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Steam will cut you off of your sizeable and paid for and possibly extensive games library simply for moving into another region.
      Amazon will cut you off of your whole Kindle library simply for moving into another region.

      It gets worse than that. I was on vacation in Germany last month, and had a couple extra hours to kill at the hotel one night. So I fired up my Amazon Prime account to watch some movies on Amazon instant video. Not authorized in the area. Same with Netflix and Hulu.

      I had to run an SSH proxy through one of my web hosting servers to trick these services into thinking I was still in the U.S., but very few people know how to and have the resources to do that. This whole anachronistic distribution and publishing rights by region has got to die. I try to be a legit customer, paying for my movies and music. But if this is what's going to happen, I'm ripping everything I buy and making my own copies regardless of what silly laws they get passed. If I can't bypass the DRM, I'm downloading the pirated version of my legitimately bought media.

    14. Re:This sounds like a money grab by beep54 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  2. Rapidshare will die soon by aglider · · Score: 2

    30GB/day is really ridiculous for a paid service, unless there's some other larger plan. I mean, legal downloads ... Just imagine a 100 MB application/movie being downloaded 300 times a day ... it's either a toy or something it won't interest anyone.

    --
    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
  3. Who cares? by leromarinvit · · Score: 4, Funny

    Please wait 1 minute to read this comment.

    --
    Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
  4. Get your own web site by tepples · · Score: 2

    If you are the author of a 100 MB application or a 100 MB movie, why are you using RapidShare in the first place? You could just get a domain and get some $7/mo hosting plan that claims "Unlimited Bandwidth!!!111" like Go Daddy's.

    1. Re:Get your own web site by JackieBrown · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  5. No content worth anything on Rapidshare by TheSkepticalOptimist · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
  6. Not paranoid enough by poity · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since they can probably:
    1. Locate the retail card reseller from the account number
    2. Cross-reference security video with receipt time stamp
    3. Look up your license plate number or enhance your face

    So make sure you walk or ride your bike, and maybe wear a fake mustache. In the future, all mustachioed cyclists will be suspected of piracy.

    --
    your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
  7. Won't save them by Hentes · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  8. What I want to see is... by jonwil · · Score: 2

    What I want to see is a site similar to Rapidshare or Megaupload or MediaFire that uses client-side encryption (even the actual name of the file would be part of the opaque blob). Heck, build a system (presumably using a cypher that is designed to be good with random seeking in the file if such a cypher exists) that can play videos in the client (where the video player would take the key as input and decrypt on the fly). So like YouTube except that the hosting provider never sees the content and is unable to pre-screen it.

    So without the key all you get is some kind of ID for the file (just start at 0 or 1 and keep going up) and an opaque AES encrypted blob.

    Harder for the media companies to send take-down notices (as they would be unable to use their regular automated system and would have to have a human manually find the decryption key for the content in whichever blog post, forum post or other location the link itself was found in.