Bye-bye, Rapidshare

[Mixah]

http://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-to-be-forced-to-shut-down-following-court-defeat-080129/

The music industry in Germany has secured a legal victory over the hugely popular file-hosting service, Rapidshare. According to the rights holders, Rapidshare is going to have to stop its users from downloading infringing music tracks from its servers, or face the prospect of being shut down.

Last week we reported on rumors that Rapidshare had, or was about to be, shut down, rumors that now look likely to resurface. The company, one of the world’s largest ‘one-click’ file hosting services, has lost a copyright infringement case against German performing rights outfit, GEMA. Representing a claimed 60,000 members and more than 1 million rights owners worldwide, GEMA has taken an aggressive stance in pursuing legal action against Rapidshare, trying to force it to be accountable for the infringing actions of its users.

For its part, Rapidshare has always insisted that it cannot be held responsible for these actions, such as when users upload copyright works (in this case, music) to their servers for subsequent downloading by others.

On 23 January 2008, the district court in Düsseldorf (Landgericht) disagreed with this assertion after GEMA succeeded in convincing the court that Rapidshare should take responsibility for infringements carried out within its service.

GEMA are trying to imply that as a result of the decision, Rapidshare will be forced to take preventative action to stop GEMA works from even getting onto their servers, rather than a DMCA-style after-the-fact removal. GEMA says that if Rapidshare are forced to filter they will likely end up with a service that’s not worth operating, so they may decide to shut it down completely.

The GEMA press release has been published before the complete court decision, so it should be digested with at least a degree of scepticism, considering the huge amounts of spin employed by anti-piracy agencies and the music industries alike.

In a statement, Dr. Harald Heker, Chairman of the board at GEMA said: “This decision is a milestone in the fight against the illegal use of our repertoire”, which was almost a carbon-copy of a statement he made about the decision from a previous court case against Rapidshare. He went on to explain that measures have to be put in place for the protection of rights holders and claiming that file-hosts are not responsible for what their users do, is no longer an option. “With this decision of general principle,” he said, “the course of future action against comparable services has been smoothed.”

In their press release, GEMA speaks about the decision of the District Court of Düsseldorf but also mentions a decision from the District Court of Cologne.

TorrentFreak spoke to Christian Solmecke a lawyer at the Cologne Chambers of Lawyers Wilde & Beuger, to see what is likely to have happened in these cases.

He told us: “The normal way is as follows: GEMA files a lawsuit against Rapidshare because of alleged copyright infringement on three or four songs. If GEMA wins, Rapidshare is then obliged not to host these particular songs.”

Lots of anti-piracy and industry bodies state that it’s possible for file-hosting services and even ISPs to monitor, police and filter copyright works from their servers and networks. This case is no different, except this time it’s the court that has demanded this type of action.

Christian explains: “From a legal point of view, it is interesting that the District Court of Düsseldorf decided that Rapidshare has to carry out a lot of preventive actions (if the GEMA press release is correct on this point, of course). This could mean that Rapidshare has to check all of its hosted material for copyright infringements - which is nearly impossible.”

The instruction for Rapidshare to take preventative action is new, and despite another similar court case reaching a different decision. Christian explains: “Only 30 kilometers away from Düsseldorf, we’ve already had a similar law suit in Cologne. In that case the Oberlandesgericht (Higher Regional Court and Court of Appeal) decided that Rapidshare is only obliged to delete specific songs stated by GEMA. They were not obliged to take preventative action.”

“The future will tell us which interpretation of the law is correct.” Christian told us. “Perhaps in one or two years we will get a decision on this question from the Federal Court of Justice.”

As the world struggles to update its laws to cope with the digital revolution, the courts - and lawyers - are being kept very busy indeed. So back to the original question: Is Rapidshare going to be closed down - or be left with no alternative but to shut itself down?

Well - maybe……maybe not.

Christian finishes up: “I believe that Rapidshare will appeal against the decision of the Landgericht (District Court) of Düsseldorf. If they do so, we will have to wait and see what the Oberlandesgericht (Higher District Court) of Düsseldorf (as the Court of Appeal) says.”

In the meantime, while the legal wheels turn and turn, Rapidshare.com and Rapidshare.de continue to operate as usual.

[ThePurpleBunny]

Rapidshare sucks anyway. Fuck having to wait an hour to download a video after I already downloaded one.

[Mixah]

Rapidshare sucks anyway. Fuck having to wait an hour to download a video after I already downloaded one.

it's still more accessible than FTPs and other means of file sharing.

[Shinkuu Tatsumaki]

Rapidshare sucks anyway. Fuck having to wait an hour to download a video after I already downloaded one.

Same.

And one thing I never understood, was why the hell do people upload single songs using rapidshare. You have to wait a few minutes or longer depending on how big the file was.

Couldn't they use zshare or sendspace or something with no limit... It's only a single...

Not everyone has a premium account...

Megaupload > Rapidshare anyways.

[MaybeMemories]

FUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

u idiots? rapidshare meant 1 hr MOVIES on 2 mb MIN connection.
Clearly better than torents. UGH this is awful

[Demon Dash]

Meh, I use Mega Upload anyway...

[MaybeMemories]

yeah but majority of things are on rapidshare, i suppose people will migrate to megaupload. But i liked rapidshares interface better, less adds and all that. Plus fee seemed reasonable aswell.

But obviously if rapid goes others will follow on peaking

[Taito]

I don't really agree that Rapidshare was the worst upload site, but it's definitely not the only one so oh well.

[epsilon_]

zshare is better than rapidshare anyway, megaupload has a slight advantage because of the size of the upload limit..

[v1y]

i'm a big fan of mediafire.

[Shinto]

I'm not a fan of Megaupload, I like sendspace because there is no wait time when you finish downloading to go into another download.

[Cronopio]

Megaupload is terrible, but at least you can bypass their limits easily. But they still fill you with ads, spyware and shit. Rapidshare has one good thing going for it: they host the files for a lot of time compared to other filehosts.

Sendspace is still the best filehost out there IMO. Mediafire, Badongo and Gigasize are pretty good too.

[Plutoburn]

it's still more accessible than FTPs and other means of file sharing.

BT &　ED2k network > rapidshare.

[umthrfkr]

meh, the wait time killed rapidshare. nothing else. megaup zshare were my preferences. deposit files aint too bad. kinda slow dl speeds but the wait time is shorter than rs.

[Mixah]

verizon no longer allows me to use BT and i've never heard of ED2k. I've been using the SRK upload spot.

[sainthuey]

I don't think it's true, i was dling shit off there yesterday.......

[Nairdas]

Hopefully sharebase will become more popular now. That shit is better than rapidshare and megaupload combined. I was able to download up to like 600 mb before I had to wait.

[KayinNasaki]

The biggest problem is, more so then say a service like Kazaa or Napster in the day that COULD be used for legal means, but was used for 90% piracy, Rapidshare, like torrents, have infinite legal uses. In fact, the service, though also used extensively for piracy, is probably used more for legal files, which is more then P2P clients can say.

This is one of those steps backward for data laws and court rulings. Ah well, theres a million other services out there and they won't all lose in Court, especially not since they're also hosted in a variety of countries.

[platinum_pinoy]

Newsgroups are the best.

[CrouchingTiger]

Don't waste your time platinum_pinoy. Every time one of these threads pop up, I come in and mention newsgroups. Nobody cares. Or they only care long enough to lose interest, heh.

I'm done advertising for usenet. The longer it stays non-mainstream to the dumb teenage girls, I guess that's safer anyway.

[umthrfkr]

could you explain newgroups to me?

[Mixah]

newsgroups are nice

[Lonewolf_Fenrir]

it's still more accessible than FTPs and other means of file sharing.

Not.
Ftp > *

[Mixah]

FTPs are easy, but they're hard to come by.

[axeman61]

could you explain newgroups to me?

Me too. I've heard about news groups like they were some godly shit.

[Mixah]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsgroup

[Sharktongue]

wait times? i suggest paying to be premium. 60 bucks for a year, and i can sa y best 60 bucks ever. no waiting , no nothing. and eveyrthing is on rapidshare. all fast and shit. the best things aren't for free. cheap nukkas!! ;p

[umthrfkr]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsgroup

i dont feel like reading. what do i got to download.

[CrouchingTiger]

^Newsgroups aren't free. That's usually where most people lose interest. However, they could cost twice as much as they do now, and still be vastly superior to all the free alternatives like torrents and file sharing sites and p2p.

Laziness, umthrfkr, is also why people lose interest in newsgroups. You don't simply download a program, and then click a file to start downloading ala torrents. You download a newsreader program, sign up for a usenet service, search a usenet indexing website, set up your newsreader program to work with your service provider, and THEN you're on the fast track to leet downloadz.

It sounds complicated, but it's not. Most of what I described is a one time thing. Once you've done all that, THEN it's simply a matter of double clicking an .nzb file just like you would a .torrent file.

[noober]

sucks, good thing i got most of the dc "backups" i wanted.

[RockBogart]

verizon no longer allows me to use BT and i've never heard of ED2k. I've been using the SRK upload spot.

How does verizon know your using BT? Ive had them for years and download stuff practically nonstop.

[Mixah]

How does verizon know your using BT? Ive had them for years and download stuff practically nonstop.

i got a warning from them. now, they've blocked all but my AIM, MSN, and port 80, and a few other commonly used ports (like my anti virus updating and windows update ports)...

but if i put my BT client on 80, for example, it wont connect p2p. my AIM port works, but then i can't be on AIM for some reason. it might be because i downloaded about 80GB of PS2 games in a few days, which is about the same time i got the warning.

[umthrfkr]

i too have had verizon for a while and had them say nothing while dl'ng a shit load. wonder if they pick at random.

yeah newsgroups does seem like too much work for free movies and music.

[sainthuey]

^Newsgroups aren't free. That's usually where most people lose interest. However, they could cost twice as much as they do now, and still be vastly superior to all the free alternatives like torrents and file sharing sites and p2p.

Laziness, umthrfkr, is also why people lose interest in newsgroups. You don't simply download a program, and then click a file to start downloading ala torrents. You download a newsreader program, sign up for a usenet service, search a usenet indexing website, set up your newsreader program to work with your service provider, and THEN you're on the fast track to leet downloadz.

It sounds complicated, but it's not. Most of what I described is a one time thing. Once you've done all that, THEN it's simply a matter of double clicking an .nzb file just like you would a .torrent file.


newsgroups are free, if you're under verizon DSL.

setting it up takes like less than 2-3 minutes,

just download the program 'grab it' from schemes, put in your account name and password(call verizon if you don't know it), search for the threads you want(alt.binaries.movies.divx, alt.binaries.music.mp3.lossless etc etc) subscribe to them, then it updates the thread, takes like 30-45 mins, then you just select the shit you want using 'shift + click', let it DL then extract the .rars from the download folder. I can usually hit 300+ kb's a second on good days but normally I hover around 220 kb's, I never get past 200~ on BT or any other place because newsgroups is straight from verizon's servers. The best thing about newsgroups is I can just set like 10 GB's worth of divx movies, music, to download, leave and come back a few hours later and it's done, don't have worry about seeding or any of that bullshit. I can even set this program to shut my computer down when it finishes downloading :rofl:

here's how my set up looks, all the list on the left is the threads which contain like terabytes worth of content no joke.

http://i25.tinypic.com/2rz9utv.jpg

[Dasiatic]

rapidshare was that site where you have to wait for hours for your download ticket, right? I still cant figure out the "rapid" in that.
please. im not going to miss that site.

dumbfiles is where its at.

[TheSix]

I got a rapidshare account. Don't have to wait for shit.

So this is bullshit. Porn is so easily accessible and it's always fast.

[ckrazy]

rapidshare was that site where you have to wait for hours for your download ticket, right? I still cant figure out the "rapid" in that.
please. im not going to miss that site.

dumbfiles is where its at.

You crackhead that why you get things like rapget.

All you do is enter all the links you want to download and they just download in order for rapidshare/megaupload etc..

[GeoG2]

Meh, I use Mega Upload anyway...

True story. It got to the point where I hated when files were on RS instead of MU.

There are soooo many options now, like sendspace... shit doesn't even bother me.

[CrouchingTiger]

Sainthuey, most internet service providers do offer a free usenet, it just usually sucks. Verizon's sounds pretty good. It sounds slow though, or is 300ish your max bandwidth?

That's one of the many benefits of the premium usenet providers (the ones you pay for). You download at your maximum bandwidth. For me, that means I top out around 600k. Back when I lived on campus with Auburn University's network, it maxed at 1,000k.

Plus you are also paying for completion and retention. I don't know what Verizon's completion/retention rates are, but they probably aren't quite as high as Newshosting or Giganews (the top two usenet providers). You get what you pay for I suppose.

umthrfkr, it's not as complicated as it sounds. The main reason I prefer usenet over torrents is because I don't like 700mb divx/avi files of my movies. I like entire 5gb DVD movies that I can burn straight to DVD and keep, which usenet has. Not to mention the maxed out speeds. I can have that 5gb movie downloaded and burnt within hours. Impossible with torrents.

Think of it like torrents, except faster, and bigger, and better.

[thurst]

i've always thought rapidshare was well worth the $15/20 a month. unlimited downloads of pr0n @ 700 KB/s is not something to scoff at.

[CrouchingTiger]

Try this speedtest to see what sort of download speeds you would get with Giganews, http://www.giganews.com/performance.html#speedtest

Whatever number you get, divide it by 8. (Why? Because they, like all stupid internet service providers, list your speed in kiloBITS per second, which nobody cares about. We care about kiloBYTES, which are 8 times larger than kiloBITS. I got 9636 kilobits per sec on their speedtest. Dividing by 8, that gives me 1200 kilobytes per sec. Basically awesome).

I don't use Giganews because they cost more than the rest, but damn are they fast. I downloaded 3mb from their servers in 2.6 seconds. As you can figure out, at these speeds, I would download a 5gb DVD movie in just over an hour.

[Septimus Prime]

Rapidshit sucks. Look up MiHD and Gigasize.

[sainthuey]

Yeah fastest I think I've seen for me is 370~kb, which is pretty damn fast for freeeeeee :tup:

but on this batch(pic i posted) i've been hovering around 220-250kb~ kinda varies from day to day. I only use torrents if I want a specific tv show episode and don't want to wait a half hour for the server binary to update for me, that's really the only advantage BT has.

[Million]

cheh, music was actually the last thing to use rapidshare for anyway. PORNPORNPORN all day long. I also preferred Megaupload and Speedyshare, though speedyshare also has a limit...the weird thing is that it was only occasional...I remember days where I could get a ridiculous amount of stuff off speedyshare with no wait time. I prefer all of these file host sites to torrents anyday.

[CrouchingTiger]

Oh heck yeah, for free, that's plenty fast. =p I wouldn't pay anything either if I was getting that for free. My ISP sucks though heh.

Saint, do you not use search sites like newzbin to find what you want to download?

[Slayzz]

i got a warning from them. now, they've blocked all but my AIM, MSN, and port 80, and a few other commonly used ports (like my anti virus updating and windows update ports)...

but if i put my BT client on 80, for example, it wont connect p2p. my AIM port works, but then i can't be on AIM for some reason. it might be because i downloaded about 80GB of PS2 games in a few days, which is about the same time i got the warning.

I have verizon too and my BT is always on. I don't dl ps2 games but I dl plenty of 4.3GB movies. If I get a letter telling me to stop. The first thing I'd do is call verizon and canceling it.

[MaybeMemories]

WHAT is this WAIT TIME? if u pay for premium then u can download unlimitedly !
it works great

[sainthuey]

grab it actually has a built in usenet search feature where you can search all the binaries for whatever, and then you can select from the results and download without having to update the server. The only downside is they only allow like 4-6 searches per day. But I barely update the servers once a week maybe, to check for some movies and DVD's, so it works great for me.

[Sheng-Long]

This was just a rumour from last week. It's not entirely true. Rapidshare did a cleanup and was down for like 3 hours and that was it. Everything is back to normal now and most importantly my files are still intact.

[DaDesiCanadian]

Torrents are ass nowadays. The only thing I use them for nowadays is PC Games and programs/PSP games. For tv shows/movies streaming divx is the way to go, and for everything else, there's ALWAYS a direct download link or someone who can send it to you.

[CrouchingTiger]

Oh, by the way, for any of you curious about usenet, Giganews has a free 3 day trial for up to 10gigs. http://www.giganews.com/

You have to sign up with credit card of course, but if you cancel before the three days are up, you won't be charged. I just used their three day trial to compare to the service I'm currently using. I only grabbed 6 gigs from Giganews though. I'm not sure if it will force cut you off at 10gb, or if it will allow you to download more than 10gb and then automatically charge you for your first month payment. To be safe, I'd make sure I didn't download more than 10gb while you're on the trial. =p

[GeoG2]

I'm shocked people don't have a problem "paying" to download premium. You matter as well be paying to buy the porn or music you're downloading from RS.

[Mixah]

I'm shocked people don't have a problem "paying" to download premium. You matter as well be paying to buy the porn or music you're downloading from RS.

there have been people that have come all the way to my store from a 20 mile distance to buy something because it's a better price than online, because no shipping..... meanwhile.... gas..... time....... and he paid with a credit card, thus having interest........

people are stupid.

i pay for this site, when i don't have ads anyway, thank you adblock.

[Syxx573]

why are people asking about newsgroups.. come on it's 2008 why don't you know about this stuff

oh and I don't like rapidshit but it's come in handy if I want to get something that is hard to find...

Megaupload is the best I think, though I guess rapidshare recently increased it's maximum file capacity

i'm a big fan of megaupload, megavideo, and megarotic. Great fucking site. I mean I watched the whole damn series of Dragon Ball on megavideo and didn't even have to download a thing.

[Night]

Heh, I liked rapidshit. I never even knew there was music shared on there. I thought 99.99999% of everything on rapidshit was pr0n instead of music lol. I always downloaded movies that were on one file anyways, and didn't care for the wait since I didn't download THAT much...

[BaSiK_TeKniK]

nOoOoOoooOoOoOoOOoOOoo!

[MaybeMemories]

there have been people that have come all the way to my store from a 20 mile distance to buy something because it's a better price than online, because no shipping..... meanwhile.... gas..... time....... and he paid with a credit card, thus having interest........

people are stupid.

i pay for this site, when i don't have ads anyway, thank you adblock.

not sure if that analogy is suitable, i dont think people are stupid paying for this.
Its a great alternative to torrents, on a 2mb [which is minimum] i can get a film within an hour, which is great. Its like saying paying for xbox live is stupid, kaillera, psn etc etc

[maxx]

why are people asking about newsgroups.. come on it's 2008 why don't you know about this stuff

oh and I don't like rapidshit but it's come in handy if I want to get something that is hard to find...

Megaupload is the best I think, though I guess rapidshare recently increased it's maximum file capacity

i'm a big fan of megaupload, megavideo, and megarotic. Great fucking site. I mean I watched the whole damn series of Dragon Ball on megavideo and didn't even have to download a thing.

these young kids dont know bout dat newsgroup and irc. lol. next im gonna hear whats napster lol.

[Nairdas]

I know about Newsgroups, but like dude said I lose interest when you say I have to pay. It's too many free options out there for me to pay for anything on the net.

Torrents + Emule > *

[ElderGOD]

This is like the issue with dattebayo, a lot of us rely on them, but they're not the only ones out there.

[TheSix]

Who remembers Suprnova?

When that closed, the internet cried. A week later, nobody cared.

Oh and if you didn't know, Suprnova has been back. Although, it has hardly returned to it's former glory.

[CrouchingTiger]

I know about Newsgroups, but like dude said I lose interest when you say I have to pay. It's too many free options out there for me to pay for anything on the net.

Torrents + Emule > *

It's WORTH paying for though. There's no excuse not to at least try the free trial from giganews. If you still aren't sold after that, then, well, you're hopeless. =p

[Nairdas]

I don't have a credit card some I can't even try the free trial.

[Sabin]

Newsgroups > al, seriously, for the many reasons people have mentioned in this thread
sure you have to pay but it owns everything else out there seriously
well worth it

[Mixah]

maybememories...maybeyourright.

[Nairdas]

Somebody do a search for Jim Malibu's Pure Pussy #7 - Black Anal on newsgroups. If it has that then I'ma be getting a credit card real soon.

[CrouchingTiger]

Pure Pussy 12. =\

Newsgroups go in cycles. Uploads are only hosted for around 70-200 days (depending on your provider). After that, they are gone. They eventually get re-uploaded though for various reasons. Per request. Or the uploader just wants to put it back up on newsgroups.

So while Pure Pussy 7 isn't on usenet right now, it might be tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month. Or never. =\ To increase your chances of getting something that isn't currently on newsgroups, you request it. Otherwise just wait and cross your fingers, or find something else to download in the mean time. =p




EDIT: Check your PMs Nairdas.

[ElderGOD]

It's much easier to track and locate newsgroups users than some random person downloading from rapidshare from a location not guaranteed to be his/her own.

This only matters of course if you have something to hide.

[CrouchingTiger]

^You talkin about the paper trail of having to pay for it? Yeah but why would they track you down?

They don't know what you're downloading. It's binary garbage. It's transfered in like hundreds of text files that look like garbled crap. It's then recompiled on your PC, into an actual usable file.

Sure, they might get suspicious when you download hundreds of gigs of text, but still. =p That's less of a red flag than some of you downloading hundreds of gigs of files that end in .avi and .mp3.

[sainthuey]

Another positive is with newsgroups, is you're strictly downloading, with torrents you have to upload like 50+ kb at times which murders my bandwidth, even sometimes when I direct download from firefox it slows my browser speed a bit, but I can DL off newsgroups at full speed and still browse the internet without significantly increased load times.

[Manx]

Noooooooooooo.......

/Vader

[HaiDuongRiceMan]

Is use of newsgroups possible on university bandwith?

[Dandy J]

damn now people will have to use the other five billion sites just like it

[ElderGOD]

Is use of newsgroups possible on university bandwith?

My college doesn't block any sites but terminates your connection.

A lot of my friends have to go through a lot of bs (paperwork and interview) just so they could have internet access again.

[MESOPOTAMIA]

Rapidshare was for chumps and noobs anyway.

[Akutabi Gamma]

Rapidshare sucks anyway. Fuck having to wait an hour to download a video after I already downloaded one.

Get a Prem. account; over the last few months I DLed over 100 GB of stuff using Rapidshare's prem. account and the speeds are good.
BTW does this mean Rapidshare won't allow music transfers or is RS.com shut down for good?

[Nairdas]

Pure Pussy 12. =\

Newsgroups go in cycles. Uploads are only hosted for around 70-200 days (depending on your provider). After that, they are gone. They eventually get re-uploaded though for various reasons. Per request. Or the uploader just wants to put it back up on newsgroups.

So while Pure Pussy 7 isn't on usenet right now, it might be tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month. Or never. =\ To increase your chances of getting something that isn't currently on newsgroups, you request it. Otherwise just wait and cross your fingers, or find something else to download in the mean time. =p




EDIT: Check your PMs Nairdas.When Pink Like Me and Pure Pussy 7 pop up I'll be interested, but as of right now it's not better than emule.

[Vy Low]

I prefer megaupload but for some reason I haven't been able to dl anything recently. It just goes to a party poker popup and the dl times out.

[Fulaani]

usenet son

[kempobot]

ah, good ol' usenet... :tup:

newsgroups will always prime choice, so long as you don't mind the limited retention, asking for files, incomplete files, and spending half of your day parring back damaged *.rar files, et al. but shit, anything's better than irc... and BT will always be king - it's literally the phoenix of ahem... sharing.

however, there's been recent rumors that some news servers are rerouting their traffic to level3/anti p2p servers. so, nothing is safe anymore...

have fun, don't do anything excessive, keep things in moderation, and most of all be careful guys.

[_MJ_#R]

torrents still around? oh ok
nutin to worry about then.