RapidShare
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
RapidShare is a One-click hosting site that operates from Germany and is financed by the subscriptions of paying users. It also claims to be the world's largest in its scope.
It is a free service, and any user can upload files of up to 100 MB without registration. The user is then supplied with a unique URL, which locates the file and enables anyone with whom the uploader shares it to download the file. Free downloaders are forced to wait 20 seconds and about 10 seconds more for each 10 MB (however, with files under 500 KB there is no waiting). As of 9/17/2006, non-premium members are required to wait a total of 170 seconds for the largest files.
Registration and payment allow additional benefits such as download of several files simultaneously, queue-skipping, and the facility to interrupt and re-start download. Premium members also have the option of extending their membership through a rewards program by accumulating Rapidshare points. However, even Premium users have no way to search the server for content (all files have to be downloaded by following a given URL).
Rapidshare is well-known for its pro-active role in battling warez (illegally shared files, such as movies and games). Rapidshare AG is fully aware of illegal files being uploaded and deletes all files that are reported
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[edit] Site Promotions
In June 2006, RapidShare started giving away free Premium accounts valid for two days every so often. Free account users are then offered the chance of extending their accounts to 1 month if they gain 10,000 "Premium points", where one point is awarded per download if the downloader is a free-user and your file is bigger than 1 MB and the downloader has generated less than 5 points in the last hour. Those increased measures were introduced to protect Rapidshare from abuse.
Interest in these free accounts is very widespread, and often thousands are registered within several minutes. There even are a few specifically-developed programs that periodically poll the RapidShare site to check if new free Premium accounts are being offered.
Non Premium account downloads usually do not work on conventional download managers. However, a number of free programs allowing leeching of hosted files are released and updated every few weeks or so, resulting in RapidShare regularly revamping its protection schemes.
On October 19, 2006, Rapidshare announced that "Unfortunately all drives of RapidShare.de are full right now" on their own website. A new website, rapidshare.com has been made to divert traffic from rapidshare.de to rapidshare.com. All premium accounts are not lost as a code could be used to transfer the account between servers. However, this code was only good for as long as the account did not expire, and the promotion did not finish. At this time, rapidshare.de and rapidshare.com will be completely separate entities, and will have to be paid for separately. This new site firstly did not have any download limits, but on October 27 "Happy Hours" came to an end bringing back the download limits. However, its upload limit is reduced from 300MB to 100MB.
[edit] Issues
Due to their ISPs' use of proxy servers, people using NTL or BT internet services in the UK are unable to utilise Rapidshare.de/.com. Some ISPs also intentionally block sharing sites like Rapidshare to make better use of the bandwidth.
