RapidShare
| File:RapidShare logo.png | |
| File:RapidShare.com screenshot.png Screenshot of rapidshare.com home page | |
| Type of business | Aktiengesellschaft |
|---|---|
Type of site | One-click hosting |
| Available in | English |
| Founded | 2002 |
| Headquarters | Cham, Switzerland |
| Key people | Bobby Chang, CEO |
| URL | rapidshare.com rapidshare.de |
| Registration | optional |
| Launched | May 27, 2002 |
| Current status | active |
RapidShare is a German owned one-click hosting pay- and free-service (with limitations) website that operates from Switzerland and is financed by the subscriptions of paying users. Rapidshare is one of the world’s largest file-hosting sites with millions of files stored on its servers. According to Alexa at Rapidshare.com was the 12th most visited website in the world in late April 2008,[1]; Rapidshare.de is declining in rank, being 244th as of May 14, 2008.[2]
History
RapidShare has two different websites, but both sites claim to be entirely different organizations and entities. The original site is RapidShare.de, which uses the German top-level domain ".de", and the organization has its central office in Cham, Switzerland.[3]
On October 20 2006, RapidShare announced that "Unfortunately all drives of RapidShare.de are full right now".[4] A new website, RapidShare.com was set up in an attempt to transfer usage from RapidShare.de to RapidShare.com.[citation needed] When the new Rapidshare.com was launched, holders of "Premium" accounts at the time on RapidShare.de were able to use both the RapidShare.de and RapidShare.com, until their account expired. It is not possible, however, to use a RapidShare.com account on the German site.
Website Update
On June 3rd 2008, Rapidshare redesigned their website with cleaner lines and a new look. Premium users can now download up to 50 gigabytes of data within 5 days; doubling the quota from the original 25 gigabytes.
Operation and services
The site allows any user to upload files of up to 100 MB (at rapidshare.com) and up to 300 MB (at rapidshare.de).[5]The user is then supplied with a unique download URL which enables anyone, with whom the uploader shares it, to download the file. No user is allowed to search the server for content; all files have to be downloaded by following a given URL.
RapidShare states that they have 240 gigabit/s of Internet connectivity and 4.5 petabytes of storage for users.[6]
Non-paying users are required to wait, usually two to three minutes, before any download becomes available and CAPTCHA validation is required. Non-paying users are also required to wait one minute for every megabyte of data downloaded before they can download again, up to 105 minutes (105 MB or 100 MiB).
Registration and payment allow benefits such as download of several files simultaneously, queue-skipping, and the facility to interrupt and re-start downloads. Every premium account is limited to a maximum of 50000 MB within a five day period, as a way to prevent account sharing especially using "Rapidleech" sites.[7]
Issues
Some ISPs intentionally block sharing sites like RapidShare so as to avoid legal issues due to the propagation of pirated copyrighted material.
On 19 January 2007, news broke that German collections agency GEMA had claimed to have won a temporary injunction against both RapidShare.de and RapidShare.com. "The latter is said to have used copyright protected works of GEMA members in an unlawful fashion."[8] To date RapidShare has claimed not to have any knowledge of the content uploaded by the users and of not being in a position to control the content. Through its injunctions the District Court in Cologne GEMA had now however made it clear to the company that the fact that it was the users and not the operator of the services that uploaded the content onto the sites did not, from a legal point of view, lessen the operator’s liability for copyright infringements that occurred within the context of the services, the spokesman added.
CAPTCHA
The site's CAPTCHA codes have been made increasingly difficult. As of 25 April 2008, CAPTCHAs are displayed as up to 8 warped alphanumeric characters, each with a dog or a cat printed over them; the user then is instructed to type in the 4 letters (although technically some "letters" are actually numbers) with the cat on them. The site allows almost no leeway in terms of entering the code: the letter l, the number 1 and the letter i are very similarly shaped characters and cannot be entered interchangeably.
Happy Hours
Since April 17 2008, Rapidshare activates a 'happy hour'[9] which consists of no CAPTCHA codes and no waiting time if the servers have enough bandwidth to spare. Usually the Happy Hours are:
See also
References
- ^ "Alexa traffic rankings for Rapidshare.com". Retrieved 2008-04-25.
- ^ "Alexa traffic rankings for Rapidshare.de". Retrieved 2008-05-14.
- ^ Central office in Cham, Switzerland: Reuters.com website. Retrieved on April 13 2008.
- ^ "Archived front page of RapidShare.de on [[25 October]] [[2006]] by Archive.org".
{{cite news}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help) - ^ "RapidShare: premium services (secure)". Retrieved 2008-01-24.
- ^ RapidShare: Retrieved on April 13 2008.
- ^ "RapidShare.com Website News Section, [[9 February]] [[2007]]".
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help); URL–wikilink conflict (help) - ^ "Heise Online". Retrieved 2007-01-31.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ "RapidShare.com - News". RapidShare. 2008-04-17. Retrieved 2008-05-29.