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RapidShare

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RapidShare
File:RapidShare Logo.svg
File:RapidShare.com screenshot.png
Screenshot of rapidshare.com home page
Type of businessAktiengesellschaft
Type of site
One-click hosting
Available inEnglish
German
Founded2006
HeadquartersCham, Switzerland
Key peopleBobby Chang
(CEO) & (COO)
URLrapidshare.com
rapidshare.de
AdvertisingSubscription
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedOctober 10, 2006

RapidShare is a German-owned one-click hosting pay- and free-service (with certain restrictions and 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 5 petabytes of files on its servers, and handling up to three million users simultaneously.[1]

History

RapidShare currently still operates two different websites. The original site is RapidShare.de, which uses the German top-level domain ".de", and the organization has its central office in Cham, Switzerland.[2] The second website, RapidShare.com has been operated and maintained simultaniously to RapidShare.de. On March 1, 2010, RapidShare.de was permanently shut down, and users visiting the site were forwarded to RapidShare.com. Furthermore, files uploaded to RapidShare.de were no longer available for download.

Operation and services

Upon uploading, the user is supplied with a unique download URL which enables anyone, with whom the uploader shares the URL, to download the file. No user is allowed to search the server for content.[1]

RapidShare stated in April 2008 5.4 petabytes of storage for users.[3] In March 2010 it claimed, after a 120Gbps upgrade to have 600Gbps of bandwidth. [4]

Registration and payment allow benefits such as unlimited download speed, download of several files simultaneously, queue skipping, the facility to interrupt and re-start downloads, uploading and downloading bigger files up to 2 GB, allowing Free Users to download their files with Premium privileges ("TrafficShare") and to store up to 500 GB of data that can not expire.

Premium accounts last for a certain number of days. Account validity is measured in seconds, not days. Thus, if you buy a 30 day account, it's valid 30*86400 seconds. The timer starts with your first login. Every premium account is limited to a maximum of 80 GB download traffic per month, divided equally over every day of the month. If there are 30 days in a month, then the user will receive 5 GB per day. The user is allowed to "save" traffic up to a maximum of 25 GB and can then spend the saved traffic all at once.[5]

There is also a rewards program that allows the user to trade "RapidPoints" for a selection of products depending on the number of points the user has collected.

There are restrictions on downloads by non-account holders, for example a 15 minutes waiting time between downloads.

Software

Rapidshare offers two computer programs to simplify file managing: It allows for torrents to be uploaded to their own file server and quickly be seeded.

Rapidshare Uploader

This software allows queuing of uploads. However, it cannot resume interrupted uploads. It is available for Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP and runs without installation.[6] A Perl-based commandline uploader is also available[7].

Rapidshare Manager

This software has many more features than the Uploader, especially queuing and resuming the upload as well as the downloads (only for the Premium Member - free users cannot resume). The version linked on the site works with Windows Vista only, however there is an older official client available for Windows XP, which may be obtained upon request from Rapidshare or alternatively from various third-party sources.[8]

Issues

On 19 January 2007 the German collections agency GEMA 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."[9]

Rapidshare started to check newly uploaded files against a database of files already reported as illegal. By comparing the files' MD5-hash the site would now prevent illegal files from being reuploaded. While this would be sufficient under United States law, it was later established in court that under German law it is not. That decision forced Rapidshare to check all the uploaded files before publishing them. [10]

In April 2009 Rapidshare handed over the personal details of uploaders who uploaded copyright-protected files to major record labels.[11][12] The incident is reported to have arisen due to a leak of a pre-release copy of metal band Metallica's Death Magnetic album.

A month later, Rapidshare stated on their website that "we will not spy out the files that our clients faithfully upload onto RapidShare, not now nor in future. We are against upload control and guarantee you that your files are safe with us and will not be opened by anyone else than yourself, unless you distribute the download link." [13]

Six global publishers have obtained an injunction against Swiss-based Rapidshare AG. Plaintiffs in the case were Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishing Group, LLC a subsidiary of Macmillan; Cengage Learning Inc.; Elsevier Inc; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.; and Pearson Education, Inc. The judgment handed down by a German court in Hamburg on February 10, 2010, and effective on February 17, 2010, ordered Rapidshare to implement measures to prevent illegal file sharing of the 148 copyright-protected works cited in the lawsuit, which was filed on February 4, 2010. The court ruled that Rapidshare must monitor its site to ensure the copyrighted material is not being uploaded and prevent unauthorized access to the material by its users. The company will be subject to substantial fines for non-compliance.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Stroll, Randall (2009-10-03). "Will Books Be Napsterized?". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-10-03. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |works= ignored (help)
  2. ^ Central office in Cham, Switzerland: Reuters.com website. Retrieved on April 13, 2008.
  3. ^ RapidShare: Retrieved on April 13, 2008.
  4. ^ Rapidshare News: Retrieved March 2, 2010.
  5. ^ "RapidShare.com - News". RapidShare. 2008-07-07. Retrieved 2009-01-18.
  6. ^ http://rapidshare.com/rapiduploader.html
  7. ^ http://images.rapidshare.com/software/rsapi.pl
  8. ^ http://rapidshare.com/rsm.html
  9. ^ "Heise Online". Retrieved 2007-01-31. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  10. ^ http://webhosting-und-recht.de/urteile/Oberlandesgericht-Hamburg-20080702.html
  11. ^ http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86179/german-lawyer-speaks-about-risks-of-using-one-click-file-hosters/
  12. ^ http://www.gulli.com/news/rapidshare-cease-desist-letter-2009-04-30/
  13. ^ http://rapidshare.com/news.html
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