In the course of the closing we have received many media inquiries. Among other things we have been asked:

Could anything similar happen to RapidShare?  Our answer:

No. We differ from services such as Megaupload in many crucial points. One of the main differences between RapidShare and services such as Megaupload is the fact that we never had the intention to abscond from legal access of any authority. RapidShare AG was founded in Switzerland and in fact, it was always located at the address given in the company details and was always run under real names without any anonymous intermediate businesses. The radical measures against Megaupload were apparently required since the situation there had been totally different.

Lawsuits were filed against RapidShare years ago, like against every other big IT company like Apple,Microsoft and Google. Legal questions concerning our service have been and will always be handled in court.What additionally distinguishes us from Megaupload:

1. RapidShare offers an absolutely legal service – like Swisscom or YouTube. We offer a secure online-storage space which our clients use in order to save and manage their data. Our service is comparable toservices such as YouSendit or Dropbox.

2. Unlike many filehosting services, we do not offer a reward system for files which are being downloaded very frequently. Even though this kind of a system could be an effective advertisement activity, we have concluded that it can lead to increased misuse. Therefore we deny it. The fact that other service providers are beingaccused for precisely these systems, validate our point of view.

3. We act rigidly against copyright infringement. We have established a proper abuse team for years andcombat successfully the abuse of our service.

4. We also have established a constructive dialogue with politics and society in the United States and in other countries. We have provided a lot of information about us in personal conversations and could reduce many prejudices.

We will improve our service for our users on a continuous basis. That includes for instance an iPhone application which we have launched this week. Other innovations will follow.

Alexandra Zwingli, CEO RapidShare