Rapidshare was buried - three button accordions tore

    Recently, many have been observing convulsions of the most popular (at least until recently) file sharing Rapidshare, which won another trial. It would seem that one could continue to rejoice at this fact, as the outflow of users began, associated with the (real?) Threat of being those whom they intend to hand over to some authorities at any suitable time.

    Being a Premium user of Rapidshare for many years, I first thought about folding fishing rods and looking for an alternative. And before I could figure out the new rules and tariffs, this morning I received another letter from Liebe Kundin with proposals for the latest rules for using the service.


    There was a lot of news on this subject at Habrahabr and community representatives are watching what is happening. You can remember for proformanews about an attempt to legalize the Rapidshare service , about declaring war on pirates, or about how Rapidshare destroys its satellites by taking domains from them , etc.

    We regarded all the news on Habré almost unanimously as the “approaching the end” of such a powerful service that, having become rich on a transfer of illegal content, suddenly decided to legalize and all pirates to voluntarily change into customers, and ban those who disagree information about them (IP addresses, download history and account numbers) to the relevant services.

    In this context, I especially like the phrase on the Rapidshare website, which says, “a journal with user IP addresses and information about downloaded and downloaded files is stored in case of possible litigation, the site management reports. “Clients who wish to challenge this decision may turn to their lawyer for help .” It’s like a pimp would photograph clients just in case he has problems with the authorities ...

    So what happens?

    I remembered here that the hype and panic around the Rapidshare service has been happening more than once, however, I don’t remember something (and I can be wrong) so that they have a real development.

    Remember, a couple of years ago there was a rally of a computer, something like Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme, good graphics of the nVidia GeForce 8800, etc.? I remember that I almost left my data and address in order to bring this outlandish device to my house.

    Then this picture went on the Internet:
    image

    We read in the news that the fight against pirates has begun through promotions for the drawing of prizes. It is one thing to identify offenders by IP addresses, another when the offender himself sends all his data about the address, etc. They just have to look at your file storage and, to identify pirated software, send law enforcement agents to your house (at the address you provided), who will charge you a tidy sum of money and not pay you to transfer to places not so remote. Then the hype subsided and there was no information about whether there were raids or not.

    image

    Recently, we also watched another lottery, where it was proposed to participate, pawning tickets for 50 RapidPoints each. The more RapidPoints you have, the greater the chance to win. I saw the news, where it was written about the same as in the rally with a computer, only in this case, especially large offenders were tracked down, because more RapidPoints for those who transfer content more. In other words, not to be trifled in order to, as well, to arrange for an exemplary major flogging on a large scale, so that others would not be accustomed.

    However, to be honest, I don’t remember any continuation: neither the winners of the contest, nor the round-ups, nor litigations with clients (sorry, pirates) of Rapidshare. Sometimes I read the foreign press, but such information did not slip past me.

    And today we again observe activity around this service, but I would not call it a stir, but rather a panic. At least the letter from Liebe Kundin partially confirms this:

    As a result of recent changes and adjustments to our services and pricing models, we received a lot of feedback from our users. There was also a positive response, but we want to be honest with you: most of the answers were negative . With our settings, the outflow of many users. As a matter of course, this was not our intention. Our goal is to introduce a system that gives you more flexibility. Nevertheless, we are glad to every user who sent the answer that we received, as this is the only way to find out what our users want. This is the reason why we have fundamentally revised our policy and suggest that you make it much easier once again . "

    The link provides you with the next set of cleverly confused conditions that, it seems to me, will no longer fix the situation.

    Until they will be warned of their willingness to hand over their clients, no sane client (pirate) will renew their accounts and develop a retreat plan so that, just in case, not to promise.

    And finally. I have heard more than once the opinion that certain groups of investors specially promoted such a project as Rapidshare to bang it at a certain moment (when everything is ready) and, together with it, punish the impressive part of the pirate community that is on their hook. Thus, they want to end piracy once and for all. However, this opinion is not yet popular and may become another button accordion, but it is obvious that piracy will take on new forms, become more cunning and prudent, in order to stay afloat.

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