 |
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page.
|
 |
|
| Type | Aktiengesellschaft |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Cham, Switzerland |
| Key people | Bobby Chang (CEO) & (COO) |
| Slogan | Easy Filehosting |
| Website | rapidshare.com rapidshare.de |
| Type of site | One-click hosting |
| Advertising | Subscription |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available in | English German |
| Launched | October 10, 2006 |
|
Screenshot
|
|
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, claiming that its customers have uploaded more than 10 petabytes of files onto its servers and can handle up to three million users simultaneously.[1] As of October 2009[update], according to Alexa's three month average rating, Rapidshare.com is the 18th most visited website globally.[2]
Contents |
History
RapidShare has two different websites, but both sites claim to be entirely different organizations and entities.[citation needed] 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.
Operation and services
Upon uploading, the user is 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.[1]
RapidShare stated in April 2008 that it had 240 gigabit/s of Internet connectivity and 5.4 petabytes of storage for users.[5]
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. If an account is still valid is measured in seconds, not days. Thus, if you buy a 30 day account, its valid 30*86400 seconds. The timer starts with your first login. However, there seems to be a limit of the delay, so people can not hoard cheap accounts for ages. Every premium account is limited to a maximum of 150 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.[6]
There is now a rewards program that allows the user to trade "RapidPoints" for a selection of products depending on the amount of points the user has collected.
As of May 2009, the downloads limit has been established for Premium Members at 5 gigabyte per day. The unused volume is automatically rolled over to the following day, up to a maximum limit of 25 gigabytes. If the complete download capacity is used up during one day, the premium-user is able to download another 5 gigabytes the following day (or after midnight CET).
The Rapidshare service is subject to frequent alterations, such as the size of the traffic allowances and the policies for their application. Users are notified of changes via the 'News' page on the Rapidshare website.
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.
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.[7] An Perl-based uploader is also available[8].
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.[9]
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."[10]
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. [11]
According to the TorrentFreak blog, in April 2009 Rapidshare handed over the personal details of uploaders who uploaded copyright-protected files to major record labels.[12][13][14] The incident is reported to have arisen due to a leak of a prerelease 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." [15]
Rapidshare has been banned in Saudi Arabia since mid 2009.
See also
References
- ^ a b Stroll, Randall (2009-10-03). "Will Books Be Napsterized?". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/business/04digi.html?_r=1&hpw. Retrieved 2009-10-03.
- ^ "RapidShare.com". Alexa. http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/rapidshare.com. Retrieved 2009-10-03.
- ^ 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". http://web.archive.org/web/20061025014424/http://www.rapidshare.de/.
- ^ RapidShare: Retrieved on April 13, 2008.
- ^ "RapidShare.com - News". RapidShare. 2008-07-07. http://rapidshare.com/news.html. Retrieved 2009-01-18.
- ^ http://rapidshare.com/rapiduploader.html
- ^ http://images.rapidshare.com/software/rsapi.pl
- ^ http://rapidshare.com/rsm.html
- ^ "Heise Online". http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/83948. Retrieved 2007-01-31.
- ^ http://webhosting-und-recht.de/urteile/Oberlandesgericht-Hamburg-20080702.html
- ^ http://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-shares-uploader-info-with-rights-holders-090425/
- ^ http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86179/german-lawyer-speaks-about-risks-of-using-one-click-file-hosters/
- ^ http://www.gulli.com/news/rapidshare-cease-desist-letter-2009-04-30/
- ^ http://rapidshare.com/news.html
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
