When I wrote about Skipscreen back in April, I figured it was probably the kind of add-on that someone, somewhere wouldn't like. Possibly the free hosting providers whose roadblocks Skipscreen is designed to circumvent.

Fast forward to today, and that's exactly the case. MediaFire has decided that Mozilla needs to remove the add-on from its directory immediately, citing violations of the MediaFire TOS. Skipscreen hijacks bandwidth, they say. It acts like a robot/spider/retrieval app -- which we forbid, they say. It reformats our web pages without our consent, they say.

The last claim I find particularly weak. Why? By their logic, if you've designed a MediaFire CSS remix and posted it to Userstyles.org, that makes you a nasty little thug.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already penned a response on Skipscreen's behalf, spelling out in great detail how the add-on functions within MediaFire's rules. Technically, anyway. Whether or not the letter wins Mozilla's favor remains to be seen.

Both the takedown request and EFF response have been posted on Skipscreen's blog - have a look, and share your thoughts in the comments!

On a deliciously ironic note, Skipscreen supporters have decided to strike back by uploading copies of the Firefox addon to MediaFire servers. I see what you did there.

Sites like Rapidshare and Megaupload tend to be used heavily by music blogs and other sites that don't have the bandwidth or the storage space to handle a high volume of downloads. Even the biggest mirror services can get bogged down, though. Sometimes one mirror will be slow, your file will be taken down, or you'll reach the limited number of downloads some sites allow. Mirroring your file on several services at once is a possible solution, and DropRecord makes it easy to upload to all of them at once.

Ok, so maybe DropRecord doesn't upload to every single mirror out there, but it hits around a dozen sites, most of which you've probably heard of: the aforementioned Rapidshare and Megaupload, Zshare, Mediafire and Sendspace are all included. You can also search DropRecord for files people have uploaded with it. The only catch is the 500mb upload limit, but a lot of individual mirror sites impose similar caps.

Rapidshare is a service that makes it easy for users to upload and share files with a large number of people. It can come in handy whether you want to send a large file to a friend who has an email service with file attachment size limits or you want to share files with visitors to your website without paying a hefty web hosting bill.

But Rapidshare has never gained the respect that sites like YouSendIt have. YouSendIt provided a similar service, but it's aimed at sending files to just a handful of users. RapidShare, on the other hand, has become popular with users who upload copyrighted software, music, and movies. And today the company could be paying the price of allowing users to get away with those activities.

A German court is ordering Rapidshare to remove about 5,000 songs from its servers. The lawsuit was brought by GEMA, a group representing copyright holders. The court has ruled that Rapidshare must begin filtering content to prevent users from sharing any songs from artists covered by GEMA. The court estimates the value of those songs at about 24 million Euros (roughly $34 million).

Of course, it's pretty difficult to filter content on a site like Rapidshare, where users can easily ZIP files, change file names, or make other small changes to trick any filtering software that's put in place. I guess we'll have to see if Rapidshare ties to take any steps toward implementing content filters, and if the court decides that a good faith effort is good enough. Or maybe Rapidshare will just appeal the ruling.

[via TechCrunch]

Rapidstack is an excellent search engine for users who download frequently from - where else - Rapidshare. They claim to filter dead links and return only working downloads, and it worked well in my testing.

Submit your query, and results load below the text box as Rapidstack finds them. Queries can take a little while to execute depending on what you search for, but you're trading a few seconds of waiting patiently for download links that actually work. That's a trade most of us are probably willing to make.

Each filename links to the original URL, and links are also displayed beneath the file name. If you'd rather just head straight for the files, clicking on extract links will open a new tab and produce a plain-text listing of Rapidshare URLs ready to paste into your favorite download manager - like JDownloader.

If you're a frequent uploader of files, Zoom's File & Image Uploader is well worth a download.

It supports more than 70 file hosting services, including popular options like Mediafire, Megaupload, Rapidshare, Sendspace and 23 image hosts like Imageshack and Tinypic. Multi-server options like Rapidspread and MassMirror are also included.

When adding files to your queue, you can select image or file hosts. Choose a host, and FUP will display key information about the service like maximum file size, duration of storage, and acceptable file types. Multiple files can be queued during a single add action, as long as they're all headed to the same host.

Parallel uploading is supported up to a maximum of eight at a time. When uploads complete, FUP displays links to your files and embed codes. Want to verify things? Right click and choose "open in IE" to view your upload in your default browser.

File & Image Uploader is a free download for Windows only, and it's a great tool for anyone who uses file hosting services on a regular basis.

Rapidspread is a a simple file upload site that automatically forwards your files to as many as 10 filesharing sites. From the upload page, simply browse for your file(s), agree to the terms of service, and click share. Once the upload is complete, RapidSpread displays a URL to send to your friends as well as direct links to your file on the supported hosts it's been transferred to.

My test rar file successfully uploaded to eight of the ten possible hosts - not too shabby. When I chose to upload several images, RapidSpread was even smart enough to limit mirroring to the media-sharing services (ImageShack, Badongo, ZShare, and ZippyShare).

Anyone that uploads files on a regular basis will appreciate the simplicity and power of RapidSpread. If the developers would just intergrate a short URL service like bit.ly, this would be a truly killer service. Give it a shot, and see how it stacks up against your favorite service.

Thanks for the tip, Eran!

Can't decide whether to upload a file to Rapidshare, MegaUpload, Badongo, or another service? Each site basically offers the same service. You can upload files and share the link with friends or strangers over emal, IM, web sites, or user forums. But some of the services might be blocked by various ISPs, or the people you're trying to share the files with might have registered accounts with one site, but not the others.

Uploadjockey solves these admittedly small problems by making it easy to upload your files to multiple sites. Just grab any file under 100MB from your desktop, and Uploadjockey will send it to six different file sharing sites and provide you with download links.

Beware, the Uploadjockey interface is choc full of obtrusive ads and pop-ups. But if you're willing to brave the advertising, we can't think of a simpler way to upload you large files to multiple sites.

[via GHacks]

We stumbled across two useful tools for finding and downloading files from sites like RapidShare and MegaUpload in the last few days. SizzledCore has an interesting article on RapidShare Happy Hours detector, a utility that notifies you when RapidShare Happy Hours are in effect. In case you're not familiar with Happy Hours, they're basically limited periods of time when any user can act like premium members and download all the files they want from RapidShare without waiting for a countdown timer to reach zero first.

The other site we ran across was WoonzFiles, a search engine for files on RapidShare, MegaUpload, and a handful of other file sharing sites. These sites are designed to let users upload files and provide a link that can be shared. They're not really meant for browsing, and they have no search functions of their own. But WoonzFiles makes it relatively easy to find songs, movies, programs, and other files on the sites. The only problem is that you have to search one site again. We were kind of hoping that you could search several sites at once.

And that got us thinking. We know that WoonzFiles isn't the first RapidShare search engine out there. What do you use to find files on RapidShare and other file sharing sites? Do you have a good search engine for finding files and download links across multiple sites? Let us know in the comments.

Yesterday we looked at jDownloader, a Java-based download client for RapidShare, MegaUpload and several other file hosting services. And one of our readers asked why we don't just use RapGet. After playing around with RapGet a bit today, we have to say, it might just be a better option.

RapGet doesn't require Java, supports 50 languages, more than 60 file hosting sites, and doesn't spit out German text at you when the language is set to English.

The program doesn't attempt to get around download limits in any way. If you have a paid account with a service like RapidShare, you can use RapGet to manage your downloads. But you can also use it with free accounts. It will automatically enter CAPTCHA codes for you, download one file at a time, and wait a specified period of time before attempting to download your next file.

[Thanks NyaR!]

If you download a lot of files from free file hosting sites like RapidShare and MegaUpload, but are tired of entering Captchas and waiting for your downloads to begin, jDownloader can help. jDownloader is a download manager that works with both sites, plus a few others. It lets you queue up a bunch of files which it will then proceed to download in the background. It can even read Captchas, which means you don't have to be near your computer when the downloads start.

The program does have a few quirks. First, jDownloader requires Java to run and you don't install it like a regular Windows application. Rather, you download and extract the contents of a ZIP file and then click the jDownloader.jar file to start the program.

Look, we know the reports of RapidShare's demise a few weeks ago were greatly exaggerated. And we're not trying to cry wolf here, but now the German file sharing service has suffered a major blow in a German court. And that could result in RapidShare either being shut down or having to find some way to implement a copyright filter. Either way, the RapidShare we've all come to know and love/hate may never be the same. At least for German users.

The German royalties collection agency GEMA, which is basically like Germany's version of the RIAA, took RapidShare to court a while back. And last week a court ruled that RapidShare couldn't hide behind the "we don't know what our users are uploading" defense.

Of course, RapidShare can still appeal the ruling, so this isn't over yet. But it's no secret that there are plenty of pirated movies, music, and software applications hosted on RapidShare at the moment. So we don't expect GEMA to step aside anytime soon.

RapidShare, the popular file hosting site used by developers and pirates alike has apparently been shut down at least temporarily by a court order. Heise Online is reporting that GEMA, a German royalties collection agency has filed a complaint against RapidShare, claiming that the service hosts copyrighted materials, which it's fairly safe to say is true.

GEMA wants RapidShare to provide details on how many files hosted on the site are copyrighted works of GEMA members. RapidShare has historically said that it does not inspect the files uploaded by users. We've seen companies like YouTube demonstrate in recent years that it is possible to build copyright detection software to inspect for illegally uploaded files. But we've also seen that no system so far is foolproof, so it should be interesting to see if RapidShare fights the complaint, promises to implement some sort of filters, or fades off into oblivion.

Another open question is what will happen to all the RapidShare members who have shelled out money for paid accounts? While RapidShare has provided some basic services for free, users have to pay subscription fees for access to faster downloads and and simultaneous downloads.

Update: As several people have pointed out in the comments, RapidShare appears to be back online. The reports of a site shutdown were apparently false and everything is back to normal.

[via TechShout, thanks Omar!]