RapidShare is a German owned One-click hosting site that operates from Switzerland and is financed by the subscriptions of paying users.
It operates as both a pay and free service (with limitations), allowing any user to upload files of up to 100 MB. The user is then supplied with a unique download URL, which locates the file and enables anyone with whom the uploader shares it to download the file. Non-premium users are required to wait a time period after each download depending on the size of the last downloaded file). Their homepage states they have 170 gigabit/s of Internet connectivity and 4 petabytes of storage for users. Registration and payment allow benefits such as download of several files simultaneously, queue-skipping, and the facility to interrupt and re-start downloads. No user is allowed to search the server for content; all files have to be downloaded by following a given URL.
On October 19, 2006, RapidShare announced that "Unfortunately all drives of RapidShare.de are full right now".[1] A new website, RapidShare.com has been made in an attempt to transfer usage from RapidShare.de to RapidShare.com.[citation needed] Premium accounts for RapidShare.de were not lost as a code could be used to transfer the account between servers. However, this code was only good for as long as the account did not expire, and the promotion did not finish. It is not possible, however, to use a RapidShare.com account on the German site. Despite the one-way compatibility with paid accounts, both sites claim to be entirely different organisations and entities. The new site originally did not impose any download limits, but on October 27, the "Happy Hours" came to an end, bringing back the download limits. The file size limit was also reduced from 300 MB to its current 100 MB.
Issues
Many people are looking for free premium accounts, so they have unlimited download capicitys - Any link to a file hosted on rapidshare which claims to contain stolen accounts or instructions on how to get a free premium account are scams. For each person fooled into downloading such a file, the scammer gets bonus points, which eventualy allow the scammer to get free acounts... for himself.
Due to certain ISP's usage of proxy servers many people are unable to access files hosted on RapidShare as they will be using one proxy server and RapidShare limits download slots for everyone using that proxy server as if it were one person. RapidShare's policy is to encourage those behind proxy servers to purchase premium accounts.
Some ISPs also intentionally block sharing sites like RapidShare to make better use of bandwidth. Every premium account is limited to a maximum of 25 GB (25.000.000.000 bytes) within a five day period.[2].
Non-paying users are required to wait more than two minutes before any download becomes available. CAPTCHA validation required. Non-paying users are also required to wait two minutes for every megabyte of data downloaded before they can download again, up to 208 minutes (100 MB).
Paying accounts for RapidShare.de and RapidShare.com are separate and not interchangeable.
On January 19, news broke that German collections agency GEMA had 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,".[3] To date RapidShare has claimed not to have any knowledge of the content uploaded by the users and of not being in a position to control the content. Through its injunctions the District Court in Cologne had now however made it clear to the company that the fact that it was the users and not the operator of the services that uploaded the content onto the sites did not, from a legal point of view, lessen the operator’s liability for copyright infringements that occurred within the context of the services, the spokesman added.
Both RapidShare.de and RapidShare.com sites are currently still operating and the consequences, if any, of the claimed injunction have yet to be seen. So far they have not been sued.
Comparison of one-click hosters
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The table below compares general information for notable one-click hosting services used for file sharing.
Web Host  | Language | Max. file size[1] | Waiting time | Traffic/bandwidth limit | File expiration | Misc. notes | Remote Uploading? | Affiliate or Rewards Program? | Does the uploader get a deletion link? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FileFront | EN | 1,000MB | Yes | - | 6 months of inactivity | Premium advert-free service available via FastPass. Limited to video gaming files. | - | - | - |
| FreeFileServer | EN | 100MB | Yes | Unlimited | 30 days minimum | Maximum filesize increase and wait decreased with free registration. Deep linking is possible. | - | - | - |
| Hostfile.nl | EN | 100MB | NO | Unlimited | 2 months of inactivity | No waiting time. Completely free. | - | - | No |
| RapidShare | EN | 100MB | Yes for .de ; No for .com | Wait 2 minutes every MB downloaded up to 208 minutes (free service), 25GB every 5 days (paying users) | 90 days of inactivity | Unusable for many due to ISP proxies. Non-paying users have to wait up to 208 minutes between downloads. Separate paying accounts for rapidshare.de and rapidshare.com, CAPTCHA validation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Megaupload | EN | 500MB | 45 seconds for non-premium user | No for premium user (non-premium user unknown) | 90 days of inactivity | some country is limited using slot system. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| YouSendIt | EN | 100MB (free) | - | 100 downloads per file over 7 days for free registered (YouSendIt Lite) users. 3 downloads over 7 days for unregistered users. | The person downloading must also register. |
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