Approved Filehosts. Re: Rapidshare removing Rapidpoints

If you haven't heard already, Rapidshare is discontinuing their rapidpoints program.

Now we can all talk about how we should be sharing for the good of sharing but let's be honest here. Most people need an incentive to do so. Rapidshare has decided to remove that incentive and to me it seems like there should be a large shift away from the use of RS from now on.

Personally, for posting on Phun, I'll probably move to Megaupload to the delight of most of Phun's leechers .

I was wondering, however, if the administration here on Phun will be planning on modifying the approved filehosts in the near future because of this. What does everyone else think?

 

Why would rapidshare not be allowed any more? They aren't phishing or using intrusive ads or similar crap... odd question.

 

We've had a few discussions about it Tlusty, and we're aware that we need to look at other hosting options, but at this point, we've got nothing on the table so to speak. Methinks that may change soon though. Bear with us.

 

I can assure you that whatever changes may be made to the approved hosts list, RS isn't going anywhere Spectre.

 

I didn't say that it should be removed from use on Phun. I'm just saying that fewer and fewer people will be using RS from now on. Phun only allows a few filehosts to be used and that the option of allowing new hosts may be considered.

 

I had always assumed that the hosts that are not allowed are not allowed for some actual reason, not just because there are a finite number allowed here on Phun, maybe I'm wrong, probably am. Not that it really matters to me, I'm happy using any that are safe, fast and not cluttered with a billion pop ads

 

That is exactly where the bear shits in the woods bro. Any host that is up for consideration here goes through a bit of a vetting process. As you know, there are a hell of a lot of shit hosts out there and we want to make sure that any of those approved are not only good for the board, but safe, bullshit free, and good for you guys as well.

I'll mention this to the others again, and we'll get on it. The need doesn't go unnoticed.

 

Let's first see how these RS thing develops. I can hardly believe that they are so stupid to let also the uploaders pay for their accounts (well, of course you don't have to pay to upload, but ...)

In the last few months i was more and more tempted to think that those guys at the RS office are either contantly drunk or stoned: they behave like a small student start-up company. Constant changes that are only mentioned afterwards in their "news", the FAQ-section is not up to date since ages and steadily you are getting less for more (RS points exchange rate). This is not the behaviour of the leader in OCH.

But if these changes are made to protect their business because of court trials then this may affect also the other hosters as well.

A lot of new filehosters appeared in the last year, but since they all have some sort of affiliate program you will open Pandorras box when allowing them here: all kind of remote uploaders and cashwhores will post others posters links and re-post their stuff as often as it's possible with double, triple and so on accounts. Hard to manage for the mods to keep the board clean and safe.

 

I think that's their only reason for it. They say they're doing it to protect the users but it's obviously to protect their own asses. Like you said they'd have to be idiots to make this decision and not think they will lose a ton of subscribers.

And as Salty said RS is not going to be removed from the approved list so only time will tell what kind of impact their decision will have on RS.

 

I agree and believe they are doing it to protect themselves from the courts and also that they might not want to be no. 1 anymore and hope the another host starts attracting the legal opposition that rs has had.

Completly agree with LouisZ here. If you are going to look into other approved hosts then just as important as the competence of the host is the kind of posters that the host attracts.

 

yeah this is crazy, now there is no free way to keep a premium account, you have to pay for it. Im paid until august, but i might consider switching to megaupload as well, but there is jst a tonne of more stuff on rapidshare then megaupload.

 

"nobody will lose any points that have already been accumulated. You can redeem them until July 6, 2010"

So after July 6, you DO lose all your points, because they cant be spent on anything?

 

They've changed their ideas again...​

New product and pricing models make RapidShare as flexible and low priced as never before

June 25, 2010
As of June 29, 2010, RapidShare is changing its product and payment models. In future, the costs for RapidShare accounts will no longer be tiered according to time period; instead there will be five packages with differing features. These packages will be paid for with a new currency known as "Rapids". In order to grant our customers maximum flexibility when choosing the type of package, they will be able to switch between packages on a daily basis and hence select the features that suit them best at the time.
All previous Collector's accounts will be automatically converted into free Premium accounts on July 1, 2010, thus making it still possible to use the RapidShare service without charge.

What is actually changing: pricing model
RapidShare is launching a new currency: Rapids. This will allow users to take up various packages from June 29, 2010.
Rapids can be acquired in the following increments:

Prepaid funds
400 Rapids € 4,99
1.000 Rapids € 9,95
2.000 Rapids € 19,90
5.000 Rapids € 49,75
20.000 Rapids € 199,00

Many users will already have Rapids in their accounts from the start as both the remaining days in existing Premium accounts and unused traffic share will be converted automatically into Rapids. For each remaining day, the user will be credited with 20 Rapids. For example, if there are 10 days left in a Premium account, the user will receive 200 Rapids. Each GB of traffic share will be converted into 5 Rapids.
Any accumulated Free- and Premium-RapidPoints can also be converted into Rapids until July 6, 2010. Altogether, 5,000 Free-RapidPoints and 5,000 Premium-RapidPoints equate to 600 Rapids; 50,000 Free-RapidPoints and 50,000 Premium-RapidPoints will give 6,000 Rapids.
A maximum of 50,000 Rapids can be obtained by converting existing RapidPoints, traffic share or the remaining time on a Premium account.

What is actually changing: product model
These modifications will not change anything for Free Users. Owners of previous Collector's accounts will receive free Premium accounts, enabling them to manage their uploaded files in the Premium Zone. Downloading and storing are just the same as for the previous Collector's account.
Users who have Rapids can choose from five types of fee-paying package. What is special about these packages is that every user can turn the features off and on to suit their needs from day to day. In this way, we hope to offer our customers an even better service and, above all, much more flexibility than before.

Overview of fee-paying packages:
Name Price / day Storage Traffic / day Filemanagement Directdownload Foldermanagement Verification Licence Manager Licence Manager+
RapidSmall 4 Rapids 10 GB 1 GB x x
RapidMedium 20 Rapids 50 GB 5 GB x x x
RapidBig 78 Rapids 200 GB 20 GB x x x x
RapidSupersize 229 Rapids 600 GB 60 GB x x x x x
RapidBusiness 449 Rapids 1200 GB 120 GB x x x x x x

* RapidSmall For the RapidSmall package, users pay 4 Rapids a day. This gives them 10 GB of secured storage and a daily traffic volume of 1 GB. What's more, they can take advantage of file management and direct download features.
* RapidMedium Those who opt for the RapidMedium deal get, in exchange for 20 Rapids a day, 50 GB of secured storage and a daily traffic volume of 5 GB. In addition to file management and direct downloads, users will be able to manage their data in folders.
* RapidBig Holders of RapidBig accounts have access to 200 GB of secured storage and a traffic limit of 20 GB. Along with other RapidMedium features, in this version users will also be able to have their account verified. The RapidBig package costs 78 Rapids a day.
* RapidSupersize With the RapidSupersize account, users receive 600 GB of secured storage and 60 GB of daily traffic in return for 229 Rapids a day. As an added feature, users will have the ability to sell their own files via the Licence Manager.
* RapidBusiness With RapidBusiness, commercial customers benefit from being able to store and grant others access to even greater quantities of data for 449 Rapids a day. In addition to the features of the RapidSupersize deal, customers will have access to Licence Manager+.

Plus, business customers can receive targeted offers on request.
If users load their account with Rapids through payment or by converting RapidPoints, Traffic or remaining time, they will be set up with the smallest package (RapidSmall), with the option to upgrade at any time.
All features of the new model will be explained in further detail on June 29, 2010 on rapidshare.com.

If there are any maths/computer wizards out there who can produce a nice easy chart for this I'm sure it would be appreciated.

 

I'm curious how this change works for downloaders, specifically whats the "Traffic / day" column in that table? Is that how much we will be able to download per day, or how much other users will be able to download from us each day?

And so are you just automatically charged x amount of rapids each day even if you don't download anything? Just seems like a giant pain in the ass, I really have no idea what they were thinking with this change. Meh, just some thoughts.

 

Thanks to the mods for the quick response and additions to the allowed file host rules.

 

Yep, that was really fast. To be true i never expected this, especially allowing both, HF and SM, cause they tend to make some posters very "nervous" regarding the possibility to make money which normally leads to excessive double, triple posts/accounts. I really hope you mods can handle this.
I wonder why you didn't start with allowing a hoster like netload, looks like you can't make that much money with it, but i noticed a good download speed for free downloaders.

But i'm very lucky with that. Over the years i uploaded over 630Gb of files to RS, mostly posted at one other board and some also here. If i counted right and if it's true that you can reach only a maximum of 50k "Rapids", i have to select "RapidBusiness" for 449 Rapids/day and that would last less than 4 months. It does not look as if there's any chance to get some Rapids for your downloaded files and that would mean i'm done with RS when my Rapids are used up. They made very clear that they don't like big uploaders (of copyrighted stuff) anymore.

Might be a bit childish, but i do not want to support RS anymore by offering downloads. It is one thing to say we don't want any porn here and we change our business model in three month, but this constantly downgrading and fooling the users (both up- and downloaders) is way too much.
But as i searched for alternatives, it was important for me to have a remote upload function, cause i'd like to avoid uploading all that stuff again. I found out that remote uploading to MU is a bit tricky and slow, and as far as i could see, MediaFire do not offer any remote function yet. But it worked a treat to remote files from RS to HF, so i guess i will continue with that hoster. For me the speed as a free user is quite ok and since it seems very popular, lot of guys may already have an account there.

I think it was a good decision to allow a few more hosters since especially the uploaders were looking for alternatives.

 

hahah, hey VI - I actually posted a discussion thread about it here:

http://forum.phun.org/showthread.php?t=504525

I was initially confused as well, but after discussing with a few other uploaders, I have a pretty good understanding of the new process though still have a couple of unanswered questions.

So, going to use one of my RS accounts to explain the process. I have a Collector's account with 40 GB of files that I will use to convert to a Premium Account. After converting all the Free and Premium rapid points under the new policy, here's the stats of the new account:

New Premium Account
Files Hosted in GB: 40GB
Free/Premium points converted to "Rapids": 12,000 Rapids

So, let's look at Rapidshare's new "tier system":



Now, if I want to keep my 40 GB files hosted on Rapidshare, I would select the RapidMedium tier. That allows me a max storage of 50GB and a download download limit of 5GB per day. If I want to keep using RapidMedium for a full 30-day month, at 20 Rapids a day I would need a total of 600 Rapids for the month:

RapidMedium
20 Rapids x 30 days (1 month) = 600 Rapids

Now to host these files for a month under the new pre-paid system, I would select 1,000 Rapids for 9.95 Euros ($12.30), leaving me 400 Rapids left in balance:

600 Rapids needed to maintain RapidMedium tier account files

Prepaid funds
400 Rapids € 4,99
1.000 Rapids € 9,95 ($12.30)
2.000 Rapids € 19,90
5.000 Rapids € 49,75
20.000 Rapids € 199,00

1,000 Rapids from prepaid funds - 600 Rapids to maintain RapidMedium files = 400 Rapids in reserve for the future

HOWEVER, because I converted my Collector's account and have 12,000 Rapids in reserve, I could maintain a RapidMedium tiered account (with those 40 GB files and all) with those 12,000 Rapids for 20 months (20 Rapids/day = 600 Rapids/month, 20 months = 12,000 Rapids):

RapidMedium = 20 Rapids/day (600 Rapids/month) to maintain files

12,000 Rapids in reserve from conversion = 20 months of RapidMedium tiered account maintenance.

So, hope that can explain a little bit of the new RS system, Village. :thumbs:

But like I said, it's not without a few questions my biggest is how they're going to handle free users that want to download Rapidshare files - as there's a download limit for Rapidshare users (1GB per day for RapidSmall tier users), what's the download limit per day for free users/users without a Rapidshare account? You've got to be kidding me if Rapidshare is going to limit free users to 500MB per day OR LESS.

So, while I'm probably going to be moving away from hosting my files in the future from RS, they're going to announce even more details on 6/29 - hopefully with some good news. Otherwise, thanks for the good times Rapidshare... sorta.

Indeed... though I'm sure the mods saw all these changes from Rapidshare so they were probably already thinking of expanding filehost options. I also agree that the new filehosts - Hotfile and Sharingmatrix - may cause the problems of excessive repeat posts, but if we all pitch in to help the mods, I think it can be managed. Hell, Punkbuster pretty much does it for fun.

I don't know about you LouisZ, but I've had horrible upload and download experience with netload. Both hotfile and sharingmatrix are fairly good in speed and stability - Hotfile has surprisingly improved when they first started (I was a big time hater on Hotfile when they first launched). Still, let's see what Rapidshare's final details are on 6/29 before we bury them forever.

 

Please keep in mind gents the admins, and we mods are looking at this as a trial run. If it becomes a pain in the ass, and we're spending all of our time dumping duplicate, and improper posts with these two hosts, they'll be gone, and we'll look elsewhere to make sure we maintain a worthy "hosting stable" for you guys.