In an interesting move which could severely hurt Rapidshare and benefit rival services like Hotfile and Megaupload the leading file-hoster is now pro-actively terminating accounts of illegal downloaders and uploaders engaging in copyright infringement activity. It is no secret that the only reason for Rapidshare's success is the vast amount of illegally distributed copyrighted software's, music and movies hosted on their servers and this move is definitely going to have it's consequences.

This extreme step could be due to two reasons first being the legal problems faced by the company and second that they are soon going to have their own legal movie sharing service - Rapid Movies, whatever the reason maybe this is surely going to have an major impact on website's user-base.

In an somewhat unexpected news top file-hoster Rapidshare has entered into an partnership with Warner Bros. and is planning to launch a legal paid movie download website, in preparation of the upcoming paid downloading service the company has already started providing legal trailer downloads of movies to its premium subscribers.

Ironically, Rapidshare is still undergoing a strict copyright infringement battle in German courts which lead to speculations of service being taken down but got settled on terms of pro-active monitoring and control of illegal file uploads to their servers for the time-being.

One of the most popular file-sharing service RapidShare may face forced shutdown if unable to comply by German court's ruling against them, for removal of copyrighted content already on their servers and taking measures against uploading of copyrighted content by its users in future, the German regional court made this ruling after GEMA the German equivalent of RIAA started legal battle against Rapidshare.