It actually happened later than I would have thought. Rapidshare built their entire brand around warez uploading and piracy, so when they changed their concept to please anti-pirate organizations, it was just a matter of time.
RapidShare is Shutting down
101–110 of 146 posts
Re: RapidShare is Shutting down
#102Rapidshare shafted their paid users long ago (announcing the deletion of files on short notice) then they came back with a business model that was not exactly well thought-out.
Re: RapidShare is Shutting down
#103So, that's a business that shuts down gracefully. They clearly identify their last date, and, continue to serve a useful function (for their customers, at least) right up until that date. They even continue to take new customer business right up to 30 days prior to their last day of business. "Kindly note that RapidShare will stop the active service on March 31st, 2015. Extensions of STANDARD PLUS and PREMIUM will be…
This isn't exactly a graceful shutdown. The majority of their files were already deleted in the past on very short notice. I have no idea who still used or trusted their service.
Re: RapidShare is Shutting down
#104I remember it being the pirate king in the old days. Won't miss it much now.
Re: RapidShare is Shutting down
#105Rapidshare 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 "File hosting services" like rapidshare have been replaced by cutthroat "cyberlockers" like Keep2share and rapidgator.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" ?
A hosting service pretends to be a dropbox-style service for backing up and sharing important files. A cyberlocker abandons the pretense, all but calling for people to share files they don't own in exchange for money.
For me, the line is when you start paying website that host links to files on your service (referrals) or when you reward known pirates even after, literally, hundreds of valid takedown notices against their files.
Re: RapidShare is Shutting down
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
torrents are a reasonable solution for sharing those kind of programs.
Not really; nothing guarantees that someone keeps seeding them forever.
I'd expect a team like xda-developers to run a seed of their content; it's the best way to make sure it is still available.
Re: RapidShare is Shutting down
#107Even 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…
Wow dude, props for referring to people who crack your software as 'customers' and going through the trouble of protecting them. Most companies don't even realize that things like this can actually hurt their image.
Re: RapidShare is Shutting down
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really; nothing guarantees that someone keeps seeding them forever.
I'd expect a team like xda-developers to run a seed of their content; it's the best way to make sure it is still available.
the point is that a service like rapidshare doesn't cost the user any money (and instead, get ads). Running a torrent server is expensive, and require dedicated hardware too. You can't really seed from the webhost after all.
Re: RapidShare is Shutting down
#109Even 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…
Can you provide some info about the way piracy hurt sales - like - when a crack appears for new version, suddenly sales plummet until new version is out?
Re: RapidShare is Shutting down
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ahem Qualcomm.