It has been a while since I’ve done a blog post, to be honest. I almost forgot an official blog existed since the UserCP news updates have been far more convenient for regular updates.
But then, I couldn’t possibly put this post in the UserCP, believe me. It’s going be a longer read than your average post. I sincerely hope you’ll bear with me on this.
Not a week has passed since Megaupload.com was taken down by the US government (and most of their employees arrested) on multiple criminal counts, including piracy and money laundering. This has since caused, what most know it as, a domino effect. Seeing the downfall of Megaupload on what could be considered similar legal issues, most filehosts have either shut off their sites completely or disabled any and all mention of affiliate programs from their sites. I’ll try to outline the changes that I’m aware of, although given the current volatility of changes, my information may end up being out of date a few days from now.
The following filehosts have completely turned off filesharing. No files can be downloaded from their sites:
Filesonic
Fileserve
Filejungle
UploadStation
UploadBox
x7.to
The following hosts are either down or have blocked all of USA:
Megaupload (permanently down)
Uploaded.to (blocked all of USA)
The following hosts are still up (with or without an affiliate program):
Rapidshare
WUpload
TurboBit
ZShare
Hotfile
Megashares
Netload
Filefactory
Crocko
Filepost
Uploading
Freakshare
Bitshare
Letitbit
So, the main idea of this blog post was for us to outline how these changes affect us, our service, and our members. Put in the most precise manner that I can – it does not affect anyone at all. Our service is going nowhere. It stays. We are still going to serve our customers and adapt to changes as we see necessary.
Essentially, only a handful of major filehosts have gone down. While this could be considered a major setback, it is also only temporary. The existing filehosts will either take their place or new ones will pop up. It always happens, there’s no reason it won’t happen now. Uploaders will change and adapt. The ones that were doing it primarily for the money may drop out, the ones that did it out of goodwill will come back in. If you could find 10,000 links for a file yesterday, tomorrow you’ll only find 1,000. You might have to search and look around two times as hard, but beyond that, nothing changes.
At this point, it’s too soon to make changes at Rapid Premium. We’re going to be closely monitoring everything and we’ll see if we can deduce a pattern within the next week or two. Based on that, we’ll add/change/drop filehosts as necessary. Making any changes right now would be pretty illogical given the volatility of changes at this point. The idea here is to take steps once all of this has blown over. And while it does, remember, we’re here to help. Anything you need, just head over to the helpdesk, open a ticket, and we will get back to you.
As much as it sounds like this has been a setback for us too, it has not. In fact, at this point, it makes greater sense to subscribe to our service (or one similar to ours) then to buy an account at an individual filehost. With a pricing that no other competitor can match (given the after sales support), it’s a no-brainer to invest with us because we will continue to evolve and adapt to the changes. One filehost, alone, cannot do that. And that same filehost going down does not affect us in any way or form. If anything, we have backups. Wherever the trend moves to, we’ll adapt to move with.
Ok, I admit that I’m a tad too excited about this; it may be no feat, but it certainly is another in our series of ‘unique improvements’ compared to the competition out there.
Up until now, we assigned our users to a server, statically. Unlike other services out there, we did not (and still do not) use servers randomly to generate links. Users assigned to a specific server would always get their links generated from that server, and that server alone.
We believed this ensured a level of consistency in terms of speed and connection for our users. The dynamic switching offers no degree of control. This system did, in that you could open a ticket with us to request a server switch if you felt that your speeds on the current server were low. But was that really ‘control’? Nope.
So what have we changed? Based on a couple suggestions and feedback (including the overwhelmingly positive response on the EU server), we’ve given you, the end user, a greater degree of control!
Quite simple, really. Now, instead of contacting us to move you over to a different server, all you have to do is move yourself over. Move yourself? Yes, indeed. With the latest improvement, deployed early yesterday (Sunday, 25th September 2011), our users are now able to move their account between any one of our 6 current servers (and increasing as we grow!). You are no longer going to have to open a ticket with us and wait for us to move you over. If you’re experiencing slow speeds and would like to try out a different server, you can simply switch yourself over!
Do keep in mind though, that because we prefer a level of consistency, the switch is prospective. It’s not retrospective. This is to say that the switch is applied to any links generated after the switch is made. Links generated prior to the switch, will still be sourced from the old server 
So, how do you do it? Quite simple, really. But we’ve posted a knowledgebase entry on it anyway. Check it out here:
http://helpdesk.rpnet.biz/knowledgebase.php?article=18
Enjoy the new functionality
