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RapidShare is Shutting down

rapidshare.com

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Re: RapidShare is Shutting down

#71
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that has always sketched me out about the Android rooting and moding scene. "Download this suspect binary from rapid share and run it as root" seemed to be a cornerstone of it. The warez/cracks scene was essentially the same thing, and yet if you knew where you were getting things from, it was quite safe. The antipiracy groups have since been spreading plenty of FUD (and some possibly attaching malw…

But it's even worse than that. People run random operating systems on devices they carry 24/7. Devices with microphones, multiple cameras, access to personal and work email, text messages, passwords, your location. And there are so many places for things to wrong. Any one of the following could be malicious, incompetent, or compromised: * The ROM's maintainer. There are many groups here, for example many ROMs are bas…

It's not clear to me how this differs qualitatively from the current situation with equipment manufacturers all doing their own customizations to devices. Quantitatively there's a difference - a smaller pool of devs/maintainers to potentially subvert and a much smaller pool of potential users vs. a much larger manufacturer dev team and a much larger potential pool of users.

How much would it cost to buy off, for example, the entire radio hardware/firmware team at a manufacturer in your own country (meaning pretty much either China or South Korea), and on a governmental scale how reasonable or unreasonable is that number?

Re: RapidShare is Shutting down

#72
Even as an indie software developer, this makes me sad.

Rapidshare was the most responsive to copyright complaints out of all the filesharing sites, they took down links within 2 hours of being reported. But instead of nuking cracks to my software on Rapidshare immediately, it meant I let the Rapidshare links stay alive longer, because I knew I could turn them off whenever I wanted. I'd rather people uploaded cracks to RapidShare where I could see how popular / unpopular a link was & had control over when to remove it, than somewhere like MegaUpload that would deliberately take a long time to remove links.

I never saw evidence of piracy helping sales (always hurt sales) and I never used it for promotion, but I was more worried about cracks that came bundled with a virus, or that came bundled with a collection of illegal images. That stuff had to be nuked straight away for the protection of customers (and since much of the time, customers never understood that cracks don't come from the company that makes the software).

Re: RapidShare is Shutting down

#73
Is anyone else here surprised that Rapidshare is still even a thing and lasted this long in the face of Mediashare, Megaupload, Zippyshare and all those other sites? I haven't seen a Rapidshare link shared in a very long time.

I remember once upon a time if you downloaded leaked music or even software, then Rapidshare was the go to site for that kind of thing. Funny how things change.

Re: RapidShare is Shutting down

#75
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's even worse than that. People run random operating systems on devices they carry 24/7. Devices with microphones, multiple cameras, access to personal and work email, text messages, passwords, your location. And there are so many places for things to wrong. Any one of the following could be malicious, incompetent, or compromised: * The ROM's maintainer. There are many groups here, for example many ROMs are bas…

It's not clear to me how this differs qualitatively from the current situation with equipment manufacturers all doing their own customizations to devices. Quantitatively there's a difference - a smaller pool of devs/maintainers to potentially subvert and a much smaller pool of potential users vs. a much larger manufacturer dev team and a much larger potential pool of users. How much would it cost to buy off, for exam…

When you put it like that, it seems inconceivable that the alphabet agencies in various countries didn't do this years ago.

Re: RapidShare is Shutting down

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how this could have ever ended any other way. RapidShare was clearly only popular in the first place because of piracy. Once they started restricting that they became just another Dropbox/OneDrive/Google Drive competitor.

It worked for YouTube. They got their start with pirated content and pivoted quite successfully.

>They got their start with pirated content and pivoted quite successfully.

By being bought by Google, then having Google spend 100s of millions of dollars defending YouTube in court.

Re: RapidShare is Shutting down

#77
post #26
post #4

When Megaupload (and some other sharehosters) died, quite a lot of interesting things just disappeared from the net. I'm talking about things like small tools that were shared on e.g. xda-developers before Github came, about fan-mods for games etc... The 'big' ones continued living, but if you now e.g. search for a special kernel/ROM for your G1/ADP1 you are mostly out of luck. It's sad that there's basically no way…

I have fond memories of Rapidshare. Even the cats.

Haha, just told a friend about those cat-captchas...

For the ones that do not know what is meant: http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2008/04/24/rapidshare-captcha-wi...

Re: RapidShare is Shutting down

#78

Rapidshare died because the market moved on. "File hosting services" like rapidshare have been replaced by cutthroat "cyberlockers" like Keep2share and rapidgator. The most successful cyberlockers do what Rapidshare decided not to: pay uploaders, even those who share illegally. And also pay linking sites through referral schemes far more resilient legally. They aren't trying to appease anyone not either a customer or…

what's the difference betwwen a "cyberlocker" and a "file hosting service" ?

Re: RapidShare is Shutting down

#79
post #4

When Megaupload (and some other sharehosters) died, quite a lot of interesting things just disappeared from the net. I'm talking about things like small tools that were shared on e.g. xda-developers before Github came, about fan-mods for games etc... The 'big' ones continued living, but if you now e.g. search for a special kernel/ROM for your G1/ADP1 you are mostly out of luck. It's sad that there's basically no way…

When MP3.com was shut down, I shed a tear :-( It was an amazing collection predating the YouTube's of today.
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