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RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

rapidshare.com

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Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#3

Post by sp332 »

A link posted earlier by lightning https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5397414 has some good information.

However, if free users want to “add storage space” – i.e give RapidShare some money – they can keep their files.

For 9.99 euros for 30 days (or 99.99 euros per year), users can have 250GB of storage space. The 500GB storage account costs 19.99 euros per 30 days or 199.99 per year.

So what happens when users want to store more than 500GB? TorrentFreak was told that a user asked RapidShare how much it would cost to host around 2TB of files and was given a price of 120 euros ($155) per month. For less money anyone can buy a real-life hard drive, not just once but every single month.

So, it looks like they might also delete data from paying users, with only 24 hours notice.

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#4

Post by dietrichepp »

sp332 wrote: post #3

A link posted earlier by lightning https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5397414 has some good information. However, if free users want to “add storage space” – i.e give RapidShare some money – they can keep their files. For 9.99 euros for 30 days (or 99.99 euros per year), users can have 250GB of storage space. The 500GB storage account costs 19.99 euros per 30 days or 199.99 per year. So what happens when users want…

2TB for $155/month? S3 would be $175/month, or $140/month at reduced redundancy. What a shock that you might pay market rates for online storage services.

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#5

Post by makomk »

sp332 wrote: post #3

A link posted earlier by lightning https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5397414 has some good information. However, if free users want to “add storage space” – i.e give RapidShare some money – they can keep their files. For 9.99 euros for 30 days (or 99.99 euros per year), users can have 250GB of storage space. The 500GB storage account costs 19.99 euros per 30 days or 199.99 per year. So what happens when users want…

Oh, and naturally they're heavily limiting the rate at which free users can download their own files from the service. Almost goes without saying.

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#8

Post by tomku »

It's important to remember that the business model of file locker sites like RapidShare and Mega is to convince you to upload your files to their site so that they can monetize access to them. Your access as the original uploader is no exception - if they think they can squeeze a couple dollars/euros/bitcoins out of you through changes like this, they'll do it. If you don't want your files to be held hostage, you should probably consider hosting that has a different business model.

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#9

Post by JohnTHaller »

oellegaard wrote: post #7

They should leave existing users data, if they wanted to keep any respect in the community I'd say. It is sad watching all these companies giving "free" services away, just to remove them again. Don't trust anything free, because nothing really is.

If something is free, you're not the customer, you're the product being sold.

I'm consistently amazed by people who are surprised when a free product either (1) switches to a paid model, (2) has service issues or (3) goes under.

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#10

Post by tomku »

oellegaard wrote: post #7

They should leave existing users data, if they wanted to keep any respect in the community I'd say. It is sad watching all these companies giving "free" services away, just to remove them again. Don't trust anything free, because nothing really is.

Paying them yourself isn't enough when it comes to file lockers. Their goal is to get not only the original uploaders paying to keep their files online, but also some percentage of downloaders as well. That's why sites like this have countdown timers, bandwidth limits and waiting periods. They're hoping that people will get so sick of the bullshit trying to download your files that they'll spring for a premium subscription.

This is why they've had such an interesting relationship with copyright infringement. Obviously, they want to avoid getting shut down - but people uploading TV shows, games, music, movies, etc on places like DDL forums drive so much traffic and so many premium memberships that their business model almost depends on them.

Some of them even pay dividends to the popular uploaders, as a thank you for driving traffic. This drives an entire underground economy, where people upload copyrighted content to file lockers, then use the payments from the file locker service to buy more content to upload.

Edit: One example of this kind of underground economy is in the anime fansubbing community. You've got people who want to widely distribute 200-500mb files (generally) that are... not entirely free of copyright, to say the least. Hosting the files yourself would be a pain, as you'd get takedown notices AND have to pay for servers and bandwidth. However, you can upload your episodes to a couple file locker services and post the links on your site. You'll get a kickback from the file lockers for driving traffic, and if they get taken down, you can just reupload them, possibly even at the same site. The fansub groups say they use the money to pay for hosting and buy Blu-rays to rip and release, but I'm sure some of them pocket some as a salary too.

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