14 DAY TRIAL // RapidShare claims it has come up with better ways to deter piracy than to limit the download speeds for customers who haven’t purchased premium accounts. As a result, the speed limitations have been lifted.
To end up like Megaupload is most likely every file sharing site’s worst nightmare. That’s why, in the past period, the owners of such sites have started coming up with all sorts of measures to discourage piracy, or at least to distance themselves from those who use their services for downloading and sharing copyrighted materials.
RapidShare is one of these sites. The company has done everything it could to collaborate with rights holders and regulators in an effort to keep its activities within the boundaries of the law.
Back in February 2012, RapidShare decided to limit download speeds for free users to around 30KB/s. At the time, the Swiss company’s representatives were confident that this measure would discourage pirates from utilizing their services.
However, now, RapidShare claims that it has come up with better ways to discourage pirates. According to Numerama, starting with last week, users saw that their download speeds were normal, even though they haven’t registered for paid accounts.
The details of the new anti-piracy measures have not been made public yet, but the file sharing site’s representatives have told TorrentFreak that the more efficient mechanisms will be announced by the end of this year.
“Even though the limit was initially introduced to deter piracy, we have since then come to realize that there are more efficient counter measures,” Rapidshare CEO Alexandra Zwingli said.
Judging by the responsible practices for cloud storage services manifesto published by the company back in April, they’re not about to stop supporting rights holders and their representatives.
On the other hand, the limitations applied to download speeds appeared to be a fairly efficient way to discourage pirates, so it will be interesting to see the new anti-piracy systems.