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View Full Version : Rapidshare fights piracy by slowing download speeds



garyopa
02-25-2012, 06:38 AM
Download speed caps for its free service.

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After the shutdown of Megaupload, a lot of file hosting services have been under increased pressure.
Now, Rapidshare hopes to drive pirates away by slowing download speeds on its free service.

After the shutdown of Megaupload, a lot of file hosting sites have been under increased pressure, a few of them also ceased operations, and some others just eliminated their free services or changed their free and premium services completely.

Well, Rapidshare hopes to deal with Piracy by adding download speed caps on its free service. Some users had experienced dramatic speed drops down to around 30/kbs, since last week.

This is what they have to say:



“On January 19th Megaupload was shut down by the FBI. Shortly thereafter, several other file hosters curbed their services or entirely stopped their operations,” the company told TorrentFreak.

“RapidShare has been faced with a severe increase in free user traffic and unfortunately also in the amount of abuse of our service ever since, suggesting that quite a few copyright infringers have chosen RapidShare as their new hoster of choice for their illegal activities,” the company explained.

“We have thus decided to take a painful yet effective step: to reduce the download speed for free users. We are confident that this will make RapidShare very unpopular amongst pirates and thus drive the abusive traffic away.”


According to them those who like to pirate prefer not to pay, but most likely they are aware that these restrictions will drive users to their premium services. However, they are also offering ways for free users to get faster download speeds, after the original uploader 'explains' to the company what he is trying to share.



“We knew that through the action taken we would even affect some RapidPro customers, especially those who offer their own files via websites or blogs and heavily depend on a possibility for free users to download their files. Therefore, we have decided to offer those customers a kind of deregulation that allows free users to download their files with the fastest possible speed again,” the company says.

What this means is that uploaders of content will have to provide RapidShare with details on the nature of their account including what type of files they’re sharing, the name of the sites and blogs where the download links are getting posted, and the uploader’s email address and telephone number.

RapidShare adds that by signing up to the scheme, uploaders give the company the right to check their files and websites for illegal activities.


A pretty harsh move! Will this 'tactic' work for them?

NEWS SOURCE #1: Rapidshare slows download speeds to drive away pirates (via) TorrentFreak (http://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-slows-download-speeds-to-drive-away-pirates-120224/)
NEWS SOURCE #2: Rapidshare fighting piracy by slowing download speeds (via) SlashDot (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/24/1619215/rapidshare-fighting-piracy-by-slowing-download-speeds)

Our thanks to 'Gauss' for another news story!

JonathanD
02-25-2012, 10:41 AM
This could work, movies and games are fairly large downloads but mods cheats and hacks are usually pretty small so slowing the download speed while annoying is acceptable.

I hope this actually works, pirates should be using IRC or Torrents or Newsgroups not direct downloads. Leave these types of services alone so people have a decent way of distributing files.

Xenogears V
02-25-2012, 02:25 PM
Isn't slowing speed that you fight piracy, but using software, that (for example) search name of game

wewii
02-27-2012, 01:30 PM
People still use rapidshare? If you are going to release custom game content or share legit files, you are better off with mediafire. No BS time waits, captchas or stupid 30k/s speed caps for free users.