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RapidShare Prepares to Mass Delete Free User Data Over 5GB

RapidShare has announced a business model change that is causing panic among its non-premium users. After offering unlimited storage space to customers using its free service, the Swiss-based file-hoster is about to implement tough new limits. This Wednesday all free customers will be limited to just 5GB of free storage if they choose not to pay for a premium account. All excess files still hosted will be deleted forever April 3.

rapidshare-logoIn today’s super-connected world we no longer have to store data solely on our desktop machines. We can now dump it into “the cloud” and access it seamlessly from any of our devices no matter where we are. It’s convenience on a grand scale but one that brings new concerns on the flipside – a lack of control over our own data.

In the wake of the Megaupload fiasco, today we bring news of another event with the potential to chip away further still at Internet users’ confidence in remote storage.

RapidShare is one of the best known brands in the file-sharing space. In recent times the company has gone to extreme lengths to update its image and has undertaken a number of business model modifications in order to turn its back on people who might use its service to infringe copyright.

Nevertheless, the service has remained popular, not least because it offers unlimited storage space to both free and paid users. As a result many people choose RapidShare to host their personal backups. However, the company has delivered a surprise announcement that will largely put an end to the unlimited free party.

This is how it works. If you have a free account at RapidShare with currently unlimited storage, from this Wednesday you will only be allowed to store a total of 5GB. If you do nothing then all your files stored at RapidShare over the 5GB limit will be deleted April 3. Just to be crystal clear – if you currently have 20GB of files, 15GB will be deleted.

“If you exceed your storage space limit, you will receive a warning email that files will be deleted,” RapidShare warns. “If you don’t add storage space within the next 24 hours or delete some of your files, we will delete files. That happens at midnight 24:00 CET.”

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.

While RapidShare is of course free to change its business model whenever it pleases, doing so on such short notice is a real wake up call. The announcement of the new model was issued on March 12 and customers initially thought they only had until March 20 to pay up or have all files over the 5GB limit deleted the next day. RapidShare have since confirmed an extension to April 3.

It’s also worth noting that free users may only personally download 5GB of data each day, so anyone with a large amount of files stored with RapidShare needs to get a move on in order to retrieve them all before the deadline.

Needless to say, some paying customers are also unhappy with the changes and have been asking RapidShare for refunds. The company is processing those, but reportedly charging an admin fee of 15 euros.

RapidShare has adjusted its business model several times in the last few months and each time the changes appear to have resulted in less traffic for the site. This latest tactic isn’t likely to reverse the trend.

RapidShareTraffic

At the time of publication RapidShare had not responded to our request for comment.

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  • Anyone

    committing further suicide, I see

    tell me how did those “best practices” and cozying up with the MAFIAA work out for you?

    • icec0ld

      Not very well from what I can see with continually dropping traffic and a clear intent to snoop into their customers business.

      But in all honesty, who the hell is still using this crap pile? It’s clearly thrown it’s lot in with MAFFIA and declared war on it’s customers. I don’t see how they think they can continue to survive after this.

      • Utriah

        Private sites use it a lot.

    • no

      Since 2010 i saw RS dying in this forum more times than Bruce and Arnold and Chuck .. and guess what , they are all still alive :)

      • Guest321

        You can’t expect RS to die instantly. They haven’t chopped of their own head yet by doing what Fileserve & its clones did which led to their death overnight. Instead RS has opted for a slow death with frequent policy changes that negatively impacts their customers. The traffic graph is proof enough that they are losing customers in heaps everytime they bring about changes like this.

        At one time everybody including their grandmas used to upload to Rapidshare. Hundreds of warez forums were dedicated to RS alone. Now look where they are. Hardly a handful of uploaders are still loyal to them but after this recent move, it will be interesting to see how many stick around. There are many better alternatives, so there’s not much incentive to keep using RS.

    • anon44

      Rapidshare is a good example of how you get shafted after bending over so easily for the for the RIAA/MPAA ,otherwise known as the MAFIAA.

      Reputation is important in internet business and one wrong move can destroy you,

  • JamesTagusLan

    TB and TB of files will be lost in a matter of days. they might as well close shop. how can they offer 5GB after MEGA appearing and offering 50GB!? something strange is going on!!

  • British Bastard

    Dick move Rapidshare, dick move.

    • lawyers

      never trust rapidshare

      • robthom

        I stopped trusting rs after their response to the megaupload debacle.

        Speaking of which,
        hows MEGA coming along?

        We need an rs replacement.

        • Maci

          Mega works great, 50 GB free space in the cloud with some nice sharing options

    • Aaron

      rapidshare has always sucked and it will always suck

      • http://twitter.com/SexyBabesForum Brain D

        I agree Rpadishare has always sucked big time only the cashwores will tell you it was good when it was not even close to being good

    • http://twitter.com/JenineGiommi Jenine Giommi

      And this is what happens if you have tech that MAFIAA doesn’t like and try to appease them. You end up with no business……….. http://www.youtube.com.qr.net/kgkN/watch?v=QZEpDqP3IrQ

  • Guest

    the king is dead, all hail the king (mega)!

  • capitol

    “”This Wednesday all free customers will be limited to just 5GB of free storage if they choose not to pay for a premium account.”"

    Kim Dotcom rubs his hands with glee as there is a mad rush of signups to MEGA from people leaving Rapidshare in droves for the the free 50GB membership of MEGA.

    • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

      Agreed on that. MEGA is looking better and better and better.

      • Sandy AJ

        As long as you don’t put you links (including the decryption key) out of the eyes of the public, Remember what happened with the Mega Search Me incident

  • Pierat

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XoyDqFy5pU

    go ahead and delete my stored shit, like I care.

    RapidShare you are NOT the only cyberlocker, so STOP acting like you are.

  • MadAsASnake

    And this is what happens if you have tech that MAFIAA doesn’t like and try to appease them. You end up with no business.

  • CrystalRa1n

    This is ridiculous. I really can’t say anything else. They are just money grabbing bastards. I mean come on, it costs to get a bloody refund from then! Cheeky bastards. Hope they shut down and decent file sharing sites (Mega, Mediafire and many more) find their visits and income shooting up from this mistake.

    • Guest321

      Rapidshare was dead the moment they put traffic restrictions on uploader accounts last year so that nobody could download more than 30GB a day from an uploader. It made downloading anything impossible from any uploader since 30GB would be exhausted in a matter of minutes at the start of a new day.

      Only people using RS after that were those who wanted cloud backup solutions. Now they have killed that business as well with storage restrictions for both free and premium users.

      It seems RS is not satisfied, they want to make their grave as deep as possible. And charging 15 EUR for refunds? Ahahaha. They really think anybody is gonna return to their service after this fiasco?

      Let this be a lesson to all file lockers how their business will collapse if they collaborate with the MAFIAA.

      • bobmail

        “It made downloading anything impossible from any uploader since 30GB would be exhausted in a matter of minutes at the start of a new day.”

        There was than many people out there downloading Icecold’s family pictures? wow!

        • Anyone

          what are you now? the taste-police?

      • http://twitter.com/SexyBabesForum Brain D

        Rapidshare was crap from the start when they gave out like 100k free lifetime premium accounts

  • http://www.facebook.com/forkingham.melle Forkingham Melle

    Switzerland is being dragged screaming onto the world of internet politics, first the banks, now their lax piracy laws, rapidshare has just committed neticide, rip

  • Scrooge McDuck

    Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Money… Money!

  • Paul

    From the traffic graph shown above they are getting close to having to shut down their business anyway (hopefully before the end of this year). I took what was mine back so I won’t lose anything. No big loss at this time……. Many better alternatives are out there. ;-)

  • http://twitter.com/Anime4PSP Anime 4 PSP

    Why there are even news about rapidshit. who still uses it anyway

    • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

      Quite a few people, honestly.

      • ITakeAPotatoChipAndEatIt

        Quite few people*

        • Curs3d

          “Quite a few people*”

        • EmirSc

          i do, was using it to upload games in my blog.

  • IHaveNoBalls

    Instead of improving their service they make it worse. WTF

  • gbyeRS

    in yet another move in how they do business, this is one more death knell for RS.

    notice that each time in the past 2 yrs their traffic keeps reducing ?

    for 10eu a month, they’re grossly overpriced.

    some yrs back i had enough rapidpoints to extend my account several years. it expires in a few months but i can tack on 2 more months with the balance of free rapidpoints i accumulated. i stopped using them for storage a long time ago. why bother. when it does end, i won’t pay for a renewal, just not worth it.

    sites like rapidgen and real-debrid offer very low cost prices for access to a multitude of hosts (i belong to both), so i still won’t have to bother with captchas and limits.

    many posters no longer use RS due to their cumbersome restrictions.

    it won’t take much longer for RS, who used to be a leader in their field, to disappear.

    • jim

      rapidgen and realdebrid SUCK
      use premiumize.me 32gb per day limit + free usenet

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003190235455 Teiji Ryu

    Rapidshit just went shittier. No surprise there.

  • joexxx

    This is a good thing. Market evolution is a good thing. Old things die out, new things start up. RP needs to go.

  • Martin

    What a surprise, coming from RapidShare…

    Who remembers 25 GB of Storage for premium ones?

  • No Chance In Hell

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- Gimme an external hard drive any day. NONE of these cloud services are to be trusted with MY data—PERIOD!!

    • Guest321

      I have never used the cloud to store data and never will. These companies will keep changing their policies at will. There is never any guarantee on your data’s safety. Paying a monthly fee for paltry amount of storage space is a joke when you can buy 2TB hard disks dead cheap these days.

      • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

        They will keep changing their policies at will until we have a court decision that says “Okay, ToS are equal to a legal agreement and cannot be changed unless BOTH sides agree on the change and by the way…. if the customer doesn’t want to agree to the new ToS, they can still keep their service with you under the OLD ToS until they forget to make a payment!”

    • downunder

      very true my friend.. when you pay $200 or less for a 3tb its so easy to have a cloud storage at home with 22tb with a bank turned on and a pile turned off for back ups.. when you pay $30 a month for far less space.. certainly will cos far more then storing yourself.. never used cloud and never will… you can even encrypt your drives will multiple bit security thats stronger then commerical

    • DoobyDoo

      Don’t worry, the internets police will be making your acquaintance shortly, is 5am appropriate?

    • xmichaelx

      If only it was possible to use both! (oh, wait…)

    • Guest

      Own private server is the way to go
      I like the freedom to download/upload my stuff even far away from home.

    • Utriah

      They are good for businesses with loads of money and who basically store, Excel and Word files, but with data caps, they’re pretty useless.

  • Joshua

    They’re just looking for some quick money. The free users who have tons of data there will be forced to pay if they want to keep any of them. There’s just no chance that users will be able to download and backup those files within the amount of time given.

    Honestly, I’m really surprised that ANYONE still uses Rapidshare for anything. I use Mega, and while I can see why people may be skeptical of their lasting, there’s also MediaFire. Both offer free users 50GB download speed, simultaneous downloads, and fast speeds. If anyone needs more than 50GB, I’m not sure he should be using free services.

    • bobmail

      “The free users who have tons of data there will be forced to pay if they want to keep any of them”

      I cannot imagine for the life of me anyone backing up more than 5 gig of important personal (non-pirated) data at a place like RS. I think they are making a very shrewd move here, putting themselves in a place again where they can claim to be taking action on piracy, while at the same time helping out their bottom line. It’s not just income, it’s also limiting their data center costs for storing all of this stuff.

      RS’s dropping traffic tells all of the story – once you eliminate the pirates, most file lockers don’t seem to have much business left.

      • BuddhaFacePalmed

        ” I cannot imagine for the life of me anyone backing up more than 5 gig of important personal (non-pirated) data at a place like RS.”

        Just because you can’t imagine it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I also can’t imagine people dedicating their entire life pruning miniature trees or espousing the virtues of invading everybody’s privacy in the name of copyright, yet these things still happen.

        Try again, Baghdad bobfail.

      • IDIOCRACY

        Woehahaahaa again bobby, you did it, making an @ss out of yourself. hehe.

        The fact that you do not want your personal files stored on a cyberlocker does not mean everyone is like that.

        The fact that you do not have more than 5 GB personal (non pirated data) says something about you maybe….e.g. you have no life other than the texts you put up here ….just to compare: I have over 3TB of home movies, pictures, documents, all personal data… (just not stored at a cyberlocker but on a separate HDD i.e. cheaper)

        In case I want to have a copy secured outside my properties,.. just for safe keeping and in case my backups fail all at the same time…. it would be a perfect option.

        Also the known fact that 50% of all data on MegaUpload was never downloaded, just only uploaded….shows how ignornt you are for the truth… and how lonely you must be ….even on the ward together with pelouze and Nej… hehe.

        Dropping traffic means the service sucks and becomes worse every day…. that is the reason clients will leave…. has nothing to do with piracy…or file-sharing as a phenomenon

        take other pills bobby …. these suck… you are not funny enough hehe.

        • IHaveNoBalls

          Put that 3TB on Dvds or Bluerays, what if you loose a HD (it breaks)?? Im sure u know what ur doing thought but i backed it all up on dvd’s get bluerays is my advise. ive burnt too many dvds and its taken up too much time up lol..

        • Guest321

          You serious? I gave up on burning DVDs ages ago precisely because they rarely last beyond 6 months. I have had to throw away hundreds and hundreds of burned DVDs thanks to Cyclic Redundancy Error.

          On the other hand, I have only lost one HDD in the last 10 years. If you value your data like me, its best to buy HDDs in pairs to keep mirror backups of everything.

        • JordanKratz

          Pairs ! Exactly what I do.3 Sets of them for 3 different purposes.

        • bobmail

          “I have over 3TB of home movies, pictures, documents, all personal data… (just not stored at a cyberlocker but on a separate HDD i.e. cheaper)”

          Exactly my point. You don’t have 5 gig of stuff you are going to put on a file locker to share with other people for any length of time. Maybe one or two home movies, then delete them after the in laws get them.

          ” the known fact that 50% of all data on MegaUpload was never downloaded,” – not a known fact, that is a Kim Dotcom statement, not a reality (he is prone to exaggeration). At best it’s not data, but number of files – so someone uploading say 1000 pictures of their vacation that nobody wants to look at offsets 1000 pirated movies, as an example.

          “Dropping traffic means the service sucks” – No, dropping traffic means the services didn’t do what it did before, and that was cater to pirates. Outside of large, 4 gig DVD rips, how many people do you really think put 5 gig on a site like rapidshare (where the files can be accessed by other)? If I am backing up my personal data, it wouldn’t be by putting in a public place.

          As for the pills, sorry, but I generally don’t take any meds, the most is an aspirin for the headaches that come from reading Scary_confused_idiot’s posts.

        • Guest321

          “how many people do you really think put 5 gig on a site like rapidshare (where the files can be accessed by other)? If I am backing up my personal data, it wouldn’t be by putting in a public place.”

          You really are a confused individual Bobby. If most people didn’t have more than 5GB of data to store on the cloud, dedicated cloud backup services would have gone out of business long ago. There would have been no demand for them and yet new services keep mushrooming up because its a profitable business and there is demand.

          Btw Rapidshare storage is only a public if you make it so. Don’t share any links and your data stays private.

        • bobmail

          You might have more than 5 gigs of data – but would you put it on a site like rapidshare? Nope.

          You would use either a real cloud service, or a real backup service… you wouldn’t trust your data on a free,and fairly public site.

          “Rapidshare storage is only a public if you make it so. Don’t share any links and your data stays private.”

          Provided of course that nobody happens to guess them, or they get out… or whatever. You give the link to one person, and they share it on facebook, and everyone has it.

          Nice and private!

          Point is rapidshare is about SHARE, not about “keep”. It’s not the first choice of service when it comes to storing personal data (in the same manner Mega really wasn’t either…)

        • Guest321

          I never said Rapidshare was primarily a cloud storage site. It isn’t. Its primarily a file sharing site but that doesn’t mean people weren’t using it for cloud backup. People do find multiple unintended uses for a service. So Rapidshare should have been more considerate of that fact and given more time to their customers to move their files.

      • icec0ld

        “I cannot imagine for the life of me anyone backing up more than 5 gig of important personal (non-pirated) data at a place like RS”

        I have more that 30GBs of family photos. I literally cannot for the life of me imagine what stone age you’re living in. Maybe you paint on cave walls still but I can’t imagine how awful your technological life actually is if you can’t fill 5 measly Gigs…

        “I think they are making a very shrewd move here, putting themselves in a place again where they can claim to be taking action on piracy, while at the same time helping out their bottom line. It’s not just income, it’s also limiting their data center costs for storing all of this stuff.”

        With tumbling traffic ratings, I’d of thought the last thing someone running a website would do is turn away traffic.

        That btw is totally the message you want to send: “Dear customers, we are downsizing our shit and prolly going to downsize your storage if you pay. Please, put stuff here to be held hostage at our connivance while we charge you for the privilege.” May as well spell it out. A business cannot grow if it is downsizing while experiencing diminished traffic. Anyone with any sense can tell the ship is sinking. RS is going to die and likely die slowly because it wants to snuggle up with the people who want it dead.

        “RS’s dropping traffic tells all of the story – once you eliminate the pirates, most file lockers don’t seem to have much business left.”

        I can tell you right now, you’re full of shit. I can still cruise around and nab whatever I’ve wanted from file lockers who can handle the open market wile not being bullied.

        Pretend you’re winning or whatever.For all the killing Megaupload did, we’ve seen new file lockers spring up to take their place as economics would dictate.

        • bobmail

          You would really put 30 gig of family photos on what amounts to being a public storage locker online? You don’t value them more than that?

      • MadAsASnake

        My personal photo’s are way bigger than that. My partners teaching resources are way bigger than that. Our combined day yo day docs are bigger than that. I don’t use cloud storage for backup for exactly this sort of reason.

      • IHaveNoBalls

        Once you eliminate the pirates, most file lockers don’t seem to have much business left.”

        haha you got yourself that time. So pirates were the only paying customers hey?? haha

        • Anyone

          don’t confuse him with his own logic :D

        • bobmail

          Actually the pirates aren’t the paying customers, which is the reason why most file locker sites were all about “pay for speedy download” – which effectively was RS’s business model for a long time.

          Don’t let facts get in your way.

        • Anyone

          if they pay for speedy downloads they are customers

          you really need to practice this “logic-thingy” more

        • IHaveNoBalls

          You’re a rubbish troll. Cant even do that right

    • Guest321

      Mediafire will delete your files and suspend your account before you know it if they find any copyrighted files in your account. You won’t even get a chance to argue that its your personal backup.

      Don’t go anywhere near them. Like Rapidshare, MF has become MAFIAA’s lapdog as well.

      • Billy Bob

        Nah mate, I’ve seen mediafire used heaps of times on forums for uploading parts. Works well. And if it is an issue just encrypt the archives with a fake name.

        • Guest321

          You must not have heard of Mediafire’s 3 strikes program then. Uploaders left MF en masse after they started that BS.

        • Billy Bob

          I have one strike, but I am still there. Mainly because its the easiest way for me to distribute my programming and other files to people on forums fast and easily

        • http://twitter.com/SexyBabesForum Brain D

          I guess yall have not seen what Mediafire does now if you upload something and it can be found on Amazon you get a lame Amazon msg telling you to get from them and it can not be downloaded

        • Guest321

          They show the lame Amazon message even if the file in question is not available on Amazon.

        • hH

          If you host tons of unique files there (like 100-500), you don’t even have time to close your eyes and your account will be closed forever (and all your files that belong to this account are lost). It can happen that you get 6 or 10 strikes at the same time and BAM, goodbye.

  • hmm

    rapidshare was finished few years ago

  • Pingback: RapidShare Prepares to Mass Delete Free User Data Over 5GB | Best Seedbox

  • Guest

    I wonder what they’re thinking?

    “Oh shit, we’re losing users. What should we do!?”

    “Okay, you know what you do when you’re playing Team Fortress and you’re down to 1 HP?”

    “Suicide so I’ll respawn with full health?”

    “Exactly. So that’s what we’ll do with RapidShare. We’ll suicide and respawn with full users!”

    “BRILLIANT!”

  • Rapidsuck

    Take our business elsewhere. Rapidshare is Garbage

  • dfghjkl;

    I pay less than half of that for 750GB of web space on cloud servers in Germany.

    True, I don’t have the fancy front-end. But automated backups and a heap of other clever shit is a doddle.

    Wake up people, stop relying on these corrupt and overpriced services.

  • Rapishare user (NOT)

    Rapidshare is sending ransom notes to their users I see. We have your files now pay up or else we will delete them. Looks like they have learnt something from riaa.

  • PirateSoldier

    Just get an external hard drive problem solved. Rapidcrap disappears. Next

  • NewClear

    I honestly can’t remember the last time I uploaded a file to Crapidshare. Was years and years ago…

  • guest

    This is clearly a move to make some short-term money from panicking users.

    • MadAsASnake

      Exit strategy?

  • Andrew Lee

    There are plenty of ways they could have went about such a switch without fucking the free users.

    Grandfather the accounts and let free users have a alt storage space of 5 gigs IF their current usage is over that. That seems like the best way to go about it if you ask me. Not only does it let people keep their files they can still use their account to store new files.

  • SCP-914

    I wonder if people are going to start suing over them for deleting their data. Seeing as how lawsuits over trivial stuff is getting more common these days. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did get sued over it. Besides, people trusted them to protect their data and now they are going to delete it seems a lot like that incident with the vandalized car in the parking lot incident I mentioned before. Even if Rapidshare says they can’t be sued for it, that won’t change anything.

  • highboi

    Im just curious, do users get to choose what foles are saved or is it just random and users have to download everything at their limited speed

  • http://www.facebook.com/vincent.ryzak Vincent Ryzak

    We need a Gravestone for them. “R.I.P. Rapidshare, 2002 – 2013. Willingly nuked themselves into Oblivion and chased off their users”

    • Guest321

      There’s already a gravestone and it reads…”R.I.P. Rapidshare 2002-2011″. No need for another gravestone, Rapidshare just wants us to perform their last rites for the second time..

  • Pingback: RapidShare se prepara para la eliminación en masa de archivos de los usuarios | Partido Pirata

  • An0nYm0u5

    So this is the way someone kills a business online these days. By pissing on everyone who supported them in the past.

    Its crap like this that leaves people with even less trust for newer business’s when offering services. Quickly changing rules and regulations to suit themselves.

    … but I digress…

    Perhaps its a way of saying that there is no way they will ever be able to compete with a much better service like Mega and feel driving their customers into the arms of Kim Dotcom will open opportunities for them in the future to work for Mega. (or not… )

    … but I digress…

    Perhaps their free bandwidth and storage has finally reached its limit and exceeded what they originally intended forcing them to begin gathering money before going completely bankrupt destroying lives of many people and possibly even leading to loss of data or data access.

    Many things may be the reasoning behind this over the top changes and charges. One thing that is for sure is that if they refuse to give a reason publicly, their image will soon fade and lead them to become another site lost in technological evolution.

    • red mustard

      in 2012 they gained from a 6% traffic worldwide to a 15%, and they added more servers uping their output to 600gbps from 160gbps. That costed money, now seeing that their business is not what it used to be, they need to liquidate servers (excess, eliminate unneeded bandwidth, then shore up their profit line), basically what it appears to be going on

  • Not good ideas

    This is why I never liked cloud services at all for 100 dollars I get get a 2terabyte external hard drive and storage at home cloud services are just a shit gimmick that is not secure and easily abused by company’s that roll over with law enforcments

    • joexxx

      Cloud service is a wild west right now.
      You really have to wait until there is an industry standard regarding data security and integrity and until the service becomes a commodity.
      Right now it’s a way-point to store a copy of the data for rapid distribution.

      • DoobyDoo

        ‘Cloud service is a wild west right now.’

        That’s why only 100 million people use Dropbox and a trillion files are stored on Amazons S3 cloud storage service right?

      • DoobyDoo

        That’s why only 100 million people use Dropbox and a trillion pieces of data are stored on Amazon’s cloud storage servers right?

        • joexxx

          Lots of sheep out there.
          I store a bunch of stuff in the cloud, but it’s nothing I can’t lose and nothing I can’t have somebody else find out about.

        • DoobyDroo

          ‘Lots of sheep out there.’

          herp herp herp derp derp derp

        • joexxx

          Wow… you’re good!

        • marxmarv

          Can you name a single cloud storage provider that *guarantees* you will never lose access to anything you upload? On the contrary, most of their TOSes emphasize that downloading is an undeserved, unearned, unworthy privilege granted by the grace of your deity and the benevolence of the market, revocable at any time for any or no reason.

          Frontiers are no less frontiers just because they have a few big cities.

        • joexxx

          I have a hunch most of the sheep who sign up don’t read the TOS, much less understand it.

    • Techno

      Better buying a 3TB internal hard drive.

      • True this is

        True but 3tb are little more expensive with cheap nas servers around where you can build your own bought a qnap system holds 4 drives 4cheap 2tb western digital and thrown on network wife happy kids happy and does TiVo and iTunes and apple share unit cost was 269 drives where 89 each
        Still cheap that forking out 30-50 each month and it also can be configured for cloud on the network with the software
        http://www.qnap.com/en/index.php?sn=180&lang=en

        And hot swappable

        • Guest321

          Cheap 4 bay QNAP NAS, really? Which model? And giving money to Apple? You gotta be kidding me.

    • ews

      sorry 2 tb are about 139 on sale but point taken….

      • TRes

        That depends of the store, other places
        sell good brands at lower prices.

    • DoobyDoo

      ‘and easily abused by company’s that roll over with law enforcments’

      I use Dropbox, I store perfectly legal files on there, mainly related to my place of work, what is this ‘law enforcement’ you speak off

  • JG

    I’m curious how RS will be selecting which files to delete… If I have 20 1GB files & I don’t do anything… Which 15 are going to be deleted?

    • eere

      they just press delete, no questions asked to whichever ones tehy would want, so any of them, no sequential order

    • Guest321

      They would probably delete the oldest files and keep the newest 5GB.

  • Traveller

    For most time, Rapidshare sucked so hard that even light was unable to escape from there. From with the loooooooong (up to 1.5 hours) waiting time between free downloads of two years ago to this (or that stupid dude looking at the clock among others), passing across the slow download speeds that it had during some time and how difficult is becoming to find something there.
    Avoid it at all costs. With this model they’ll certainly NOT gain traffic.

  • FenkZenk

    Wow thats messed up man, I never did like RapidShare.

    NationalPrivacy.tk

  • adam45t45

    STILL BETTER THAN RYUSHARE
    or uploaded.to you greedy 35kbs pricks.

    • Dros

      As a free user, I always get 70kbs on uploaded.,
      I agree with Ryushare, almost 40kbs.

  • Foff

    Are the guys running rapid shit fucking mental? Given that all the uploaders on all the sites I go to stop using rapidshare years ago they should have plenty of excess capacity. Apparently they got rid of it and now the figure they might as well take the freebie storage since they are not paying for it anyway.

    Do the math cloud storage can’t buy drives any cheaper then you can. I get 4tb drives for $180.00. Nobody offers that much storage at a reasonable price. So no one with any ounce of brain will put important data in the cloud that is not backed up on a personal hard drive if you really value the data. Rapidshare is dead as hell. They got cocky and thought they were really making money in the non filesharing market. Guess what dumbasses there is very little market for you services outside of the filesharing market. If anyone is left at your site after this week you will be lucky rapidshare. You say fuck you to say and we say fuck you back we will take our money elsewhere.

    All of you morons talking about mega just shut up. No one in the fs community is using them yet. I am still waiting to see my first mega link so far no joy. Go look at any site that posts links from cyber lockers and you will see mega is no where to be seen and is damn sure not part of the top 20 sites.

    • icec0ld

      This is mainly because Mega’s touted encryption is really just the emperors new clothes. It was touted as the entire reason to use Mega, so that they didn’t have to remove files or accept DMCAs since they couldn’t “know” what the files actually are.

      Turned out that false and Mega is still responding to DMCAs, except now instead of identifying files, they just blind fire scatter-shots when hollywood says “pull”. Mega flushed it’s chance at being a decent share platform after calling itself and marketing itself as one and then getting cold feet when the heat is on.

      In short, between Mega and Rapid, your shit is safer and better shared else where.

      • 444

        yeah when they deleted themselves right material from that mega site that shared links (legal material)

    • highboi

      Who turned this into file sharing, are people not allowed to use file hosting sites for personal use?

      • icec0ld

        Of course they are.

        His point was personal file storage users are in the minority of use in the file locker business as opposed to file sharers.

        • 444

          so 50% of mega files were never downloaded then the other 50% were and thats a minority? strange to me it averaged out…

        • bobmail

          Kim DotLie numbers, let’s be sure. As I said before, someone uploads 1000 images, and that “offsets” 1000 pirated DVDs (50% of the files). It’s not exactly painting an honest picture of how the service was used.

        • Anyone

          so far only the prosecution and the MAFIAA has been caught lying in that case

        • icec0ld

          Where is this proportion from? Did you know 87.2% of percentages are pulled out of peoples asses?

    • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

      Something tells me that they are having to sell their servers because they aren’t making enough cash to survive.

    • Freeze

      I already found some sites which are using Mega,
      so I don’t know what you’re talking about.
      Visiting TPB only, won’t help you to find those links.

      I’m going to add, they are not easy to find.

  • tsunku

    “That happens at midnight 24:00 CET.”

    someone should tell them there is no such time as 24:00.
    23:59 then 00:00
    i guess they have idiots working there too why oh why are so many idiots having jobs? why can’t we just kill them when we find them? oh yea congress needs congressmen…..

    • highboi

      Exactly, rofl

    • Ahmed Kraiem

      Midnight is a special case and can be referred to as both “00:00″ and “24:00″. The notation “00:00″ is used at the beginning of a calendar day and is the more frequently used. At the end of a day use “24:00″. Note that “2007-04-05T24:00″ is the same instant as “2007-04-06T00:00″ (see Combined date and time representations below). (ISO 8601)

  • bobmail

    OMG! A file host actually charging to host, rather than to download. The drop in traffic and all the people whining here is a very good indication of what is going on.

    Congrats to Rapidshare for continuing to move away from being part of the piracy infrastructure.

    • John Doe

      Most of the “whining” as you call it is because they should have given a reasonable amount of advance notice of the change. Many people have bandwidth caps and it took them months to back up their data in the first place. Not everyone was using Rapidshare for piracy.

      • DoobyDoo

        If there is one commentator on here who was using Rapidshare for non piracy reasons, i’ll eat my damn hat

        • bobmail

          I don’t suspect your hat is at risk of being food any time soon.

    • Anyone

      RS cannot survive without the “pirates”
      this just further accelerates their suicide that started with listening to the MAFIAA

  • Speedy

    For 1TB, they ask €699,99 per year.

    • Guest321

      At those rates…might as well stick a gun in the customers’ mouth and ask them to pay up.

  • guest

    Just don’t use cloud services. Someone else is in charge of your data. You are not!

  • blarg

    They are holding people’s files hostage and giving them 24 hours to pay up or else they eliminate the files. What they should have done was have it so users can no longer add additional files that would exceed the 5GB limit. That way users can take their time to retrieve those files without being able to add more files until they fall below the 5GB limit.

  • guest

    It’s your fault if you use cloud services to retain your information. You should know by now that these kinds of businesses are subject to all kinds of forces beyond your control & knowledge. Why not get a pocket HDD, this way you’re in control!

    • 444

      bc they r not large (tb’s with shock resistance at non inflated prices

  • Jack

    who the fuck uses Rapidshare anyway ? All I use mega for is to store the Pirate Bay magnet backup . Someone could buy dozens of HDD for that price in my country . I would rather have control over my own data and see the HDD go corrupt after a couple of years than to put my sensitive info into some god-knows-who-controls online filelocker service .

  • JoeyD

    Who uses RapidShare anyway? It’s always been shit.

  • downunder

    got to love these companies employing bait and switch tactics.. come and join our phone plan or data storage or what ever for unlimited for life.. opps.. 1 year later sorry free is never free.. to keep your accounts pay now HEHE

    come and join our 10 days free streaming service… but we need your credit card and name to join first!, but dont forget to cancel later else we will charge your CC each month a membership :) opps wheres that reminder and where the darn link to cancel account.. oh I have to google to find out as others asking the same,

    companies like these all need to be fined

  • frozar

    I have 42 gigabytes of Japanese futa porn on my Rapidshare account. And… it’s gone.

    • lll

      not yet will be in april unless they deleted it alreasdy, get to dl, buy prem on another site n leach it, or somethin not just whine…

      • frozar

        Someone didn’t get the South Park reference.

  • eee

    rapidshare, a history of how to run your business to the ground. Seriously if they would have read this site and past articles about themselves they woudl have woken the fuck up, but it appears its all intentional, like “do not use us, go somewhere else”. Well How about optibox and a few other services? If only optibox would open uop their main page and u dont have to use a third party that logs you even though no files pass through its servers the site says, because optibox is secure encrypted no one has key to open lockerbox.

  • Freedom

    Coercion of consumers via financial means? Businesses always die this way. Letting government entities bully you into bankruptcy? I hope thats not the case. Good luck RapidShare! You will need it.

    For those that value your freedom, please help spread the word and promote this movement!
    http://members.internetdefenseleague.org/

  • anonymous

    when are people going to realise that Rapidshit is nowhere near the company it once was and doesn’t give the service it once did. the best bet is fuck them off and go somewhere else. perhaps then they may realise that they cant keep changing terms at the drop of a hat. this trying to please the entertainment industries is gonna hurt them bad soon enough. pissing on customers will bring that hurt on much quicker!

  • Filino Rupro

    Good news for mega.co.nz!

  • Pingback: Rapidshare borrará parte de los archivos de los usuarios gratuitos que superen 5GB | MiMonteria

  • Pingback: RapidShare to limit free users to 5GB and delete the excess | MyCE.com

  • FenkZenk

    Good ole Fat Boy over at Mega is going to be delilghted I am sure. Cheeseburgers for everyone lol.

    PC-Privacy.tk

  • John Doe

    Mega does offer a pretty fair price for 4TB storage… but can you really depend on them to be in business in a few years? Can you depend on them not being raided again?

    I opted for a straight backup service (Crashplan) to replace my Rapidshare. It’s just for backups and not sharing. If I decide I need to share files, I’ll just opt for one of the cheap plans with another cyberlocker and use it separately from my backup needs.

    • John Doe

      Crashplan offers client-side encryption, they support USB external drives, and they keep deleted files if you want them to (useful for backing up DVDs, you copy the DVD to the hard drive, upload it, then delete it from drive). They do not support sharing though so it’s mainly for legitimate backups.

  • djnforce9

    Rapidshare sure isn’t doing much to help their image. First there’s unreasonable capping and now this “Bait and Switch” move. Why do people use this again? Why is it so popular?

  • Aardvark

    Storage limits for free accounts make no sense. Anyone with a brain will just use multiple accounts.

    Then again, anyone with a brain already avoids RapidShit like the plague anyway, so maybe this decision will still be effective in furthering the company’s goal of driving away all their customers.

    • Anon

      “Anyone with a brain will just use multiple accounts.”

      This attitude is why piracy is wrong and is justly curtailed. Anyone with a decent functioning conscience would accept one free account and respect the limitations of the provider. This is exactly why the internet struggles to have nice things. Pirates and their mentality really suck.

  • Pingback: Rapidshare borrará parte de los archivos de los usuarios gratuitos que superen 5GB :: Creando Fortuna

  • Guest

    There are two things that can be gleaned from this. The abruptness of this new policy indicates that RS is in serious financial turmoil to a point that giving paid subscribers at least 60 days advance notice is not even financially feasible. Simply put, no new money is coming in to pay for the continuous upload of new data. The solution: delete existing data and discourage any new data uploads. Secondly, this indicates that RS is leveraging their position to demand compensation for all those years that a paid subscriber has been storing terabytes of data for “free”. Their exorbitant storage fee should not be viewed as proactive but retroactive. Simply put, paying the corresponding fee to maintain, for example, a 2 terabyte storage, merely reimburses RS for all those years you have been using it for “free” and is not a guarantee that they will secure you the said storage capacity for whatever period of time you have negotiated with them.

  • Pingback: Rapidshare pone límites: borrarán archivos que superen los 5 GB | IntelDig

  • 123

    the next myspace

  • Pingback: Trzymasz pliki w chmurze RapidShare? Niebawem mogą zostać skasowane na zawsze | AntyWeb

  • http://www.facebook.com/ric.sansand Ric Sansand

    Hahahahaa! Oh yeah SURE the cloud is going to take over. Just keep believing that and that your data is your own!

    There is nothing online that is really “yours!” You are just ALLOWED to use it and when you clarify that distinction with these kind of services, then you are less likely to be disappointed when your stuff goes bye bye or gets seized or spammed across the web.

  • Rick

    rapidshare has and always will suck :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Frank-White/100002970542124 Frank White

    I’ve stuck with RS throughout the past year, despite many others jumping ship, but now even I am looking to store my files elsewhere. It’s just one too many changes they’ve implemented, with very little warning and no explanation or apology to customers. I can only guess that they’re reconciled to downsizing and making a lot less money. If you’re an RS employee, you might want to get an early start searching for another job. ;)

  • JordanKratz

    I do want to see Torrentfreak help and do a Story on all these other sites I see.
    Which are the good ones ? I see around 15 of them out there but how many are kind of scammy ? Anyone know………should I use that rapidgator or what ?

    • Guest321

      Rapidgator?? Hell no man! That site sucks worse than uploaded.to and that’s saying something. There are plenty of good file lockers around like putlocker, 180upload, sockshare, billionuploads. Netload used to suck but recently they have changed their stance towards free users but I don’t count on it to last long.

  • Flesz

    let them die

  • Pingback: A partir del 3 de abril RapidShare eliminará archivos en cuentas gratuitas que superen los 5GB de espacio | OhMyGeek!

  • Pingback: Rapid Share to begin deleting content over 5gig SOON. New policies start today! « NerdClout.com

  • http://profiles.google.com/pearljamamerica John Briggs

    I agree this is not a very ethical move on Rapidshare’s part but I saw it coming. They wanna purge the remainder of what they deem elicit material from there servers by any and all means necessary. This is just another step by them to reach there objective. I am just curous how there bottom line is looking right now.

  • sighh

    Dead links skyrocket by 140% overnight

  • Pingback: Tech Creative – Rapidshare vai excluir arquivos excedentes de usuários gratuitos

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  • ExRSUser

    I have 1.1TB of my backup files on RS, I asked for a quote for 3TB so I could backup the rest of my drives..

    2 TB / 169.99€ (30 days) / 1699.99€ (365 days)
    4 TB / 369.99€ (30 days) / 3699.99€ (365 days)

    Needless to say I told them to dream on. Oh and they wanted that in cash, all the rapids I have received in good faith and paid for by other users are useless and non refundable, so I have years and years of rapidshare account left with a pitiful storage allowance.

    Robbing bar stuards.

    • Guest321

      Send them an email telling them that their price is too low. They should increase it by atleast 5 times or else the competing file lockers will go out of business.

  • Pingback: RapidShare to delete user files as 5GB free account limit kicks in | Stock Market News - Business & Tech News

  • turd_sandwich

    Long live mega !

  • Utriah

    I disagree with the article’s time frame. I have an email from late January, telling me they were doing this. They also told me they’d delete my files. Which is odd because I haven’t used them at all since 2010 and I have never stored any files with them

  • rotfl

    “The 500GB storage account costs 19.99 euros per 30 days or 199.99 per year.” Wouldn’t it make more economic sense to buy a couple of backup hard drives and store the data on a nas?

  • Anonymous

    This is definitely a dick move by rapidshare. Other companies like it have been adjusting their service model in the wake of MegaUpload as well. I seriously wonder, though, if I’m the only one with a 1TB external hard drive. Here in Canada, I can get another one for $100–a pretty inexpensive investment if you’re the kind of person that really cares about your data. I’m not at all against “cloud services” but putting all of your eggs in one basket where it’s out of reach physically seems kinda dumb to me. I keep all of my shit perfectly organized and if I need to grab something to share with a friend, I just plug it in, transfer it to my computer’s HDD and then either send it through dropbox or transfer it to an SD card or USB drive. Easy peasy.

  • jamiecruz

    buh bye rapidshare…on to the next one!

  • J.

    maybe a native english speaker can translate this and make this puzblic here on torrent freak as well: http://www.golem.de/news/klage-rapidshare-nutzer-wehrt-sich-gegen-datenloeschung-1303-98348.html

  • GiulioSpinelli

    Fortunately I don’t have a rapidshare account, I use skydrive or mediafire. Skydrive offer 50 Gb of space for the old users.

  • Pie in the sky

    Many will start to see why storing in any cloud environment that you do not own leaves you at the mercy of some corporate suit. Remember this it’s like a dealer they my gave a little sample for free just to get you hooked. you can hope there is integrity but greed will win most of the time.

  • Tai

    RapidShare already made themselves completely unusable with the download restrictions they put up LAST time they changed their policy. So this change makes even less sense to me. : Whatever. I’m not using their service either way.

  • Pingback: Rapidshare macht Frühjahrsputz – Dateilöschung bei Gratis-Accounts

  • Pingback: ‘Pirate’ Site Ad Transparency Report Loses Credibility | TorrentFreak

  • Pingback: The Pirate Bay Becomes #1 File-Sharing Site as Cyberlockers Collapse | TorrentFreak

  • Pingback: The Pirate Bay Becomes #1 File-Sharing Site as Cyberlockers Collapse | Best Seedbox

  • Pingback: The Pirate Bay Becomes #1 File-Sharing Site as Cyberlockers Collapse

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001504073772 Akash Kumar

    Easily earn 100$ everyday with just an investment as low as 1$. Check it out on http://www.100dollarin1day.blogspot.com

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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