Rapidshare Aims To Convert Pirates Into Customers

packerfan10

CAGiversary!
http://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-aims-to-convert-pirates-into-customers-100326/

The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store where links to infringing material will redirect to. The plan is an attempt to bridge the gap between copyright holders and users of the site who distribute infringing material.

Similar to many other companies that operate in the file-sharing business, Rapidshare often finds itself caught between two fires. On the one hand it wants to optimize the user experience, but by doing so they have to respect the rights holders to avoid being continuously dragged to court.

To ease the minds of some major executives in the entertainment industry, Rapidshare’s General Manager Bobby Chang has revealed an ambitious plan through which copyright holder could benefit from the file-hosting service. At the same time, Chang says that his company will target uploaders of copyrighted material – who he refers to as criminals – more aggressively.

Earlier this week we already hinted at Rapidshare’s intention to terminate accounts of copyright infringers. In that article we made the mistake of quoting a fake email that has been circulating for a while, which suggested that Rapidshare had been logging IP-addresses for legal purposes. In reality, the company has only been terminating the accounts of infringing uploaders.

The true reason for us posting the earlier article was founded on information we obtained completely separately and was totally unrelated to the misquoted email.

TorrentFreak recently received documentation showing communication between Rapidshare’s General Manager Bobby Chang and representatives of the entertainment industry which is 100% genuine. In the documentation we have Chang reveals some of Rapidshare’s future plans.

“I would like to use this mail to inform you about some changes of our company’s business strategy. RapidShare’s supervisory board has decided to not just rely on the filehosting business but to extend our company’s efforts to officially distribute licensed content,” begins Chang in his writing to the media executives. Rapidshare’s manager then goes on to explain how the filehosting business is currently undergoing some major changes.

“For quite a few weeks and months we have seen changes in the filehosting business. Several new players are trying heavily and with shady or unfair business practices to get into the market. I am convinced that most of those new players are trying really hard to gain the favor of those users, who rely on cyberlockers to spread and distribute copyright protected content,” he writes, adding that other well-established cyberlockers are trying to compete with the aggressive marketing efforts of these new players.

According to Chang, Rapidshare is determined to take another route. Instead of gaining the favor of copyright infringers (or ‘criminals’ as Rapidshare’s manager calls them), they are going to take a stand against these competitors. In addition, they will step up efforts to go after users that upload copyrighted material.

“RapidShare has decided not to participate in this battle and not to fight for the favor of criminals. Instead we would rather like to agitate against these activities and – if possible – to institute proceedings against those competitors of ours, who are intentionally supporting criminal activities,” Chang writes.

“We are more aggressively than before terminating accounts of users who have been caught uploading copyright protected content,” he explains, while adding that they have also stopped the payout option that was part of the “rewards program.”

This last paragraph is what led us to post the earlier article about account terminations. In follow up conversations over email and on the phone, Rapidshare remained vague about what this would actually entail. We were told that Rapidshare doesn’t have any logs of the files people download, but that uploaders can indeed have their accounts terminated if they are caught.

Referring to infringing users as “criminals” does also explain Bobby Changs statement to the entertainment industry that “Our cooperation with the German-based organization GVU is running for several years.” GVU is the German anti-piracy outfit that includes members such as the MPA and other local content owners. Bobby Chang does not go into detail in explaining how this cooperation has effected
RapidShares relationship to content owners in the past.

Perhaps even more interesting is Rapidshare’s commitment to “institute proceedings” against competitors “who are intentionally supporting criminal activities.” By “criminal activities” Rapidshare means uploading copyrighted material, the same activity that helped their business to flourish. What the basis of these proceedings will be is not clear from Chang’s writing.

In the second part of his letter Chang goes on to plug an interesting business proposal to the media executives. Instead of simply removing pages where copyrighted material can be downloaded, Rapidshare would like to redirect users to an online store where the same content can be bought legally.

“If a user finds out that several attempts to download an illegal copy of a DVD are in vain, and if his several attempts to ’steal’ this DVD have just brought him to an online-store, he may finally be frustrated and willing to purchase a licensed version of this movie,” writes Chang, while noting that this also works for music, games and other media.

Rapidshare already has a licensing deal for promotional content with Warner Bros. and they would like to extend this to full titles of various studios. “Currently, we are redirecting users to a website [link] on which they can view promotional content only. Even though this website does only offer promotional content, it does already have 250,000 users per day,” Chang writes.

“We are willing to invest substantially into this online store and I would be glad to not just talk about RapidShare as a threat for the entertainment industry, but also about RapidShare as an interesting option to sell your products. My company does have several million users per day. I am sure, that quite a significant proportion of these users may be willing to buy your companies’ movies,” he concludes.

Rapidshare’s plans will probably be received critically by many users, but they might be essential for the site’s survival. A Rapidshare spokesperson told TorrentFreak that copyright holders have been pushing hard for proactive filters that will prevent users from uploading copyrighted material. The shop proposal on the other hand gives the copyright holders an option to convert downloaders into customers, and this might benefit all parties in the long run.

Rapidshare was sent a draft of this article and didn’t question the authenticity of the information we posted. They got back to us with the following comment:

“RapidShare is seeking the partnership of the content industry to generate new models that make piracy obsolete. One of these models is to redirect users to legal content on our own website, which is provided by content owners. This redirect has been in place since beginning of 2010 and well perceived by users so far. We experience that many users seek the content in the first place and are very often not aware – and cannot find out – if any content is pirated or not. That is why they prefer to consume it from a reliable and safe source, instead of risking to be involved in piracy. RapidShare has initiated a dialogue between the content industry and the internet industry to go forward and create new models of cooperation that eliminate the need for piracy, thus the need for pursuing users and thus protect data privacy on the internet. We believe that if users can instantly find what they are looking for at a fair price, piracy will become a problem of the past.”
 
If someone is using RS to download a movie, why the hell would they suddenly decide to buy it instead? "Oh the link went to a site where i can buy it, I'll just do that." Can't see it happening.
 
[quote name='JolietJake']If someone is using RS to download a movie, why the hell would they suddenly decide to buy it instead? "Oh the link went to a site where i can buy it, I'll just do that." Can't see it happening.[/QUOTE]
No kidding. Wouldn't the person just look for a file hosted by a different service? This seems to be destined for failure.
 
This won't work until publishers/studios accept that digital media needs to be cheaper.

So yeah, won't work. See recent movie theater pricing. Studio execs think the only way to make money is charge MORE.
 
People still use RS? I got tired of it after the slow downloads and download caps. I've been using Megaupload for file downloads lately, since they dl faster and has higher dl caps(can usually get to 5GB before it cuts off).

As for this story, it isn't going to work. Why pay for it when you can just move to another service & get it for free? They're just going to lose on subscription fees with this move.
 
[quote name='tangytangerine']People still use RS? I got tired of it after the slow downloads and download caps. I've been using Megaupload for file downloads lately, since they dl faster and has higher dl caps(can usually get to 5GB before it cuts off).

As for this story, it isn't going to work. Why pay for it when you can just move to another service & get it for free? They're just going to lose on subscription fees with this move.[/QUOTE]

I have a 50gb cap (refreshed every week) and get 5mbps on RS. Opposite of that of Megaupload.

Yea this wont work at all. Everyone will get migrate to hotfile.com or just stuck to private trackers.
 
[quote name='DarkSageRK']True that, but good luck hitting my price point.[/QUOTE]

That's the biggest problem.

Do studios really think that pirates will go for $4-6 rentals or $10-17 buy downloads? What's the incentive of going digital if the price is the same?

Also didn't they learn from Napster/Limewire? You can't make a success out of a brand built on piracy when you take away the piracy.

- edit
“RapidShare has decided not to participate in this battle and not to fight for the favor of criminals. Instead we would rather like to agitate against these activities and – if possible – to institute proceedings against those competitors of ours, who are intentionally supporting criminal activities,” Chang writes.

fuck them. Throwing your customers under the bus in an attempt to keep your dirty money is disgusting.
 
[quote name='Sporadic']

fuck them. Throwing your customers under the bus in an attempt to keep your dirty money is disgusting.[/QUOTE]

Ditto...they know wtf is going on and why people use their service, for the most part.
 
Megaupload is over 9000 times better. Seriously, no one uses Rapidshit anymore.

[quote name='refusedchaos']I have a 50gb cap (refreshed every week) and get 5mbps on RS. Opposite of that of Megaupload.

Yea this wont work at all. Everyone will get migrate to hotfile.com or just stuck to private trackers.[/QUOTE]

AFAIK, MU has no cap for premium users, at least it didn't when I had an account.
 
Doesn't matter to me. All I use RS for is finding prog rock albums that are a bitch to find elsewhere (and of course not on any major record label in the US). I prefer Megaupload anyway.
 
[quote name='chakan']So yeah, won't work. See recent movie theater pricing. Studio execs think the only way to make money is charge MORE.[/QUOTE]

No shit.

Cheapest I can see a movie around here is 7.00 and thats on tuesday night showings at a dumpy little theater, but its not real close and the problem is its near a college and tue nights mean I have to endure frat boys and college kids that try to bring their know it all bullshit ultra liberal comments into the theater.

Other than that even with my old college ID my best discount is like 8.50. I dont even bother at the AMC, they only take student discounts between like a 4 hour period on thursday afternoons and even then its still like 9 dollars.

The more they charge the more people will just not buy or will go and download it free.
 
I've just been using rapidshare because alot of the jazz blogs I frequent (and then seem to get shut down a month later) have links to it. Aside from the annoying guest restrictions I've had no problems with it.
 
[quote name='gargus']No shit.

Cheapest I can see a movie around here is 7.00 and thats on tuesday night showings at a dumpy little theater, but its not real close and the problem is its near a college and tue nights mean I have to endure frat boys and college kids that try to bring their know it all bullshit ultra liberal comments into the theater.[/QUOTE]

OK I'll bite - what movies are you watching, and what kind of ultra liberal comments are you talking about?
 
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