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Then a little over a week ago reports started coming in that users of RapidShare’s free service had experienced dramatic speed drops down to around 30/kbs. Speculation was rife that the company was exploiting the Megaupload closure fallout to drive users to their premium, non-limited products. So we asked RapidShare, and this was their fascinating response.

“On January 19th Megaupload was shut down by the FBI. Shortly thereafter, several other file hosters curbed their services or entirely stopped their operations,” the company told TorrentFreak.

“RapidShare has been faced with a severe increase in free user traffic and unfortunately also in the amount of abuse of our service ever since, suggesting that quite a few copyright infringers have chosen RapidShare as their new hoster of choice for their illegal activities,” the company explained.

“We have thus decided to take a painful yet effective step: to reduce the download speed for free users. We are confident that this will make RapidShare very unpopular amongst pirates and thus drive the abusive traffic away.”