About RapidShare File host system Posted by lamindaa on 4:37 AM

RapidShare is a German-owned one-click hosting pay- and free-service (with certain restrictions & limitations) website that operates from Switzerland and is financed by the subscriptions of paying users. Rapidshare is one of the world’s largest file-hosting sites with millions of files stored on its servers. According to Alexa, Rapidshare.com is currently the 12th most visited website globally.[1]
History

RapidShare has two different websites, but both sites claim to be entirely different organizations and entities. The original site is RapidShare.de, which uses the German top-level domain ".de", and the organization has its central office in Cham, Switzerland.[2]

On October 20, 2006, RapidShare announced that "Unfortunately all drives of RapidShare.de are full right now".[3] A new website, RapidShare.com was set up in an attempt to transfer usage from RapidShare.de to RapidShare.com.[citation needed] When the new Rapidshare.com was launched, holders of "Premium" accounts at the time on RapidShare.de were able to use both the RapidShare.de and RapidShare.com, until their account expired. It is not possible, however, to use a RapidShare.com account on the German site.

Operation and services

On uploading the user is supplied with a unique download URL which enables anyone, with whom the uploader shares it, to download the file. No user is allowed to search the server for content; all files have to be downloaded by following a given URL.

RapidShare stated in April 2008 that it had 240 gigabit/s of Internet connectivity and 4.5 petabytes of storage for users.[4]

Non-paying users are required to wait 30 to 134 seconds, depending on the filesize, before the download starts and their download-speed is limited from 25 KB/s up to 250 KB/s (depending on the server-load). In October 2008, Rapidshare extended the waiting time to 15 minutes between each download.

Registration and payment allow benefits such as unlimited download speed, download of several files simultaneously, queue skipping, the facility to interrupt and re-start downloads, up- and downloading bigger files up to 2 GBs, allowing Free Users to download their files with Premium privileges ("TrafficShare") and to store up to 500 GB of data that can not expire. Every premium account is limited to a maximum of 50 GB download-traffic per day, but the user is allowed to "save" traffic up to a maximum of 100 GB and can then spend the saved traffic all at once.[5]

There is now a rewards program that allows the user to trade "RapidPoints" for a selection of products depending on the amount of points the user has collected.

As of October 2008, the download limit has been established for Premium Members at 2.66 Gigabyte per day. The volume not used is automatically transferred to the following day, up to a maximum of 12 gigabyte. If the complete download capacity is used up during one day, the premium-user is able to save another 2.66 gigabyte the following day.

Also, as of (at least) 24 October 2008[6], files that are not uploaded with a Premium or Collector's Account, may only be downloaded ten times: "This file is neither allocated to a Premium Account, or a Collector's Account, and can therefore only be downloaded 10 times."[7]

Software

Rapidshare offers two computer programs to simplify file managing:

Rapidshare Uploader

This software allows queuing of uploads. However, it cannot resume interrupted uploads. It is available for Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP and runs without installation.[8]

Rapidshare Manager

This software has many more features than the Uploader, especially queuing and resuming of up- and downloads, but is only available for Windows Vista.[9]

Issues

Some ISPs intentionally block sharing sites like RapidShare so as to avoid legal issues due to the propagation of pirated copyrighted material.[citation needed]
On 19th January 2007 the German collections agency GEMA claimed to have won a temporary injunction against both RapidShare.de and RapidShare.com. "The latter is said to have used copyright protected works of GEMA members in an unlawful fashion."
Rapidshare started to check newly uploaded files against a database of files already reported as illegal. By comparing the files' MD5-hash the site would now prevent illegal files from being reuploaded. While this would be sufficient under United States law, it was later established in court that under German law it is not. That decision forced Rapidshare to check all the uploaded files before publishing them.
A month later, Rapidshare stated on their website that "we will not spy out the files that our clients faithfully upload onto RapidShare, not now nor in future. We are against upload control and guarantee you that your files are safe with us and will not be opened by anyone else than yourself, unless you distribute the download link." [12]

CAPTCHA

In the past RapidShare required free users to enter a CAPTCHA code for each download in an attempt to avoid automatic or "bot"-assisted downloading, but has since removed this requirement and replaced it with a 15 minute waiting limit per download. After three failures to enter the CAPTCHA download access would be blocked for a limited period.
Earlier versions of the CAPTCHAs included four letters and numbers distorted by wave filter. Users had to recognize and type all characters before the download would begin.
In the first half of 2008, an updated version of this CAPTCHA was used. It consisted of up to seven warped alphanumeric characters (though usually still four), each with a dog or a cat printed over them. The user was instructed to type in the four characters with the cat on them.
On 22 June 2008, the site changed the CAPTCHA to a tri-dimensional grid, with symbols in bas-relief.