General Terms and Conditions
1. What do these General Terms and Conditions cover?
2. What additional terms apply?
3. How does RapidShare alter its General Terms and Conditions and Data Protection Regulations?
4. Can RapidShare change the services it offers?
5. Can the price of a paid service change?
Services of RapidShare
6. What services are rendered by RapidShare to you?
7. Availability and data security
8. Changing from one type of account to another
9. How much storage space can you allocate at RapidShare?
Payment methods
10. Purchasing a paid service
11. Further payment information
12. Are none of the payment providers available to you?
13. What is the renewal service?
14. How and when can you deactivate the renewal service?
15. What happens if there are insufficient funds in your PayPal account?
Cancellation and withdrawal
16. How and when can you cancel your account?
17. Withdrawing from the contract
Handling your data responsibly
18. Your responsibilities
19. Wrongful use of accounts
20. How our services should be used
21. Share functions
22. Are you allowed to provide your access information to third parties?
23. Can RapidShare allow others to access your data?
24. Your account has been misused
25. Our services belong to us and we are proud of them

General Terms and Conditions

1. What do these General Terms and Conditions cover?

On the basis of the following provisions RapidShare AG (henceforth: ‘RapidShare’) provides cloud-storage services to its users: the General Terms and Conditions regulate access to and use of these services, websites and client software offered by RapidShare (henceforth: ‘services’) and the information, text, graphics and/or other materials relating to this, which are saved, sent or called up by these services (henceforth: ‘data’). Access to and use of the services are dependent on consent to and compliance with these conditions. Users declare their agreement with the General Terms and Conditions by consent on registration or through the use of the services.

2. What additional terms apply?

By accepting these General Terms and Conditions you enter into a legally binding contract with the company RapidShare AG.

Should a condition of the contract or a condition in the General Terms and Conditions wholly or partly become void, the validity of the contract or the General Terms and Conditions apart from this will not be affected.

3. How does RapidShare alter its General Terms and Conditions and Data Protection Regulations?

We reserve the right to adjust the General Terms and Conditions and Data Protection Regulations to new circumstances for legal, technical or economic reasons. RapidShare will inform registered users of changes to the General Terms and Conditions when they come into effect.

If significant changes to provisions regulating the use of personal data are made by RapidShare, we will announce these changes before their introduction on our website.

If you use our services after we have published these changes, you acknowledge the new General Terms and Conditions.

4. Can RapidShare change the services it offers?

RapidShare is entitled at all times to remove individual services from its offer, to change the features and functionality of existing services and introduce additional functions, to change the services included in a paid service as regards content and/or to incorporate new services into its offer.

If you have purchased a paid service and changes are made to your detriment, you are entitled to cancel the contractual relationship within a 30 day period after notification of the change. You will receive a proportional reimbursement of the price paid by you. If you have received a paid service via a promotion or another means without making a direct payment to RapidShare, reimbursement is not possible.

If you waive your right to cancel or continue to use the service, the changes are considered accepted and become an effective integral part of the contract. RapidShare is obliged to notify its users once more about this provision in particular on communication of newly prepared General Terms and Conditions.

5. Can the price of a paid service change?

The price or the scope of paid services can be adjusted to take into account changed market conditions. You will be notified of such an adjustment 30 days in advance. If the renewal service is active during an adjustment, it will be automatically deactivated by RapidShare.

Services of RapidShare

6. What services are rendered by RapidShare to you?

RapidShare AG provides you with an infrastructure which enables you to store digital data on Internet servers, to administer, secure, send and make it available to other users of your choice.

Some services offered by RapidShare are free of charge, but at a minimum require registration with RapidShare. RapidShare provides these free services with features and storage capacity to you at its own discretion.

Alongside the free services described at www.rapidshare.com/offering you have the option to upgrade your account by making a payment so that you can use additional services provided by RapidShare.

Free accounts and the data stored in them will be deleted automatically if you do not log in within a certain period of time.

7. Availability and data security

Our services are fundamentally available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Excluded from this are times in which the servers cannot be accessed due to technical or other problems beyond the control of RapidShare (third-parties in debt, force majeure etc.).

RapidShare will endeavour to carry out necessary maintenance as quickly as possible. RapidShare will only temporarily restrict access to its services if the security or functionality of its technical infrastructure urgently demands this. Should such restrictions become necessary (for example for defence against hacking attacks), RapidShare will inform its users about the reasons for this restriction in due time. Should it be foreseeable that a period of planned downtime, such as for a software update, will last longer than three hours, RapidShare will communicate this to its users at least three days before carrying out that particular work.

8. Changing from one type of account to another

RapidShare will endeavour to make changing from one type of account to another as simple as possible. Should a paid service expire, your account will be converted to a free account, which can affect your stored data. Our support service will be happy to assist you with any questions you might have about this.

9. How much storage space can you allocate at RapidShare?

The free service entails a storage space limit that can change for technical or legal reasons. Each paid service offers you agreed amount of storage space for the duration of the contract. You can obtain detailed information about them on our website.

Payment methods

10. Purchasing a paid service

RapidShare offers you a variety of payment methods for the purchase of its services. Our payment providers and the procedure for each individual payment methods are explained directly on the website.

11. Further payment information

RapidShare expressly points out that any payment that is reversed without approval by RapidShare will result in the suspension of the associated account. RapidShare is not able to examine the reasons for payment reversals. As a result, if payment problems occur we must unfortunately refer you to your payment provider.

12. Are none of the payment providers available to you?

In several countries payment for a paid service cannot be made using any of the payment options offered directly by RapidShare. As a result RapidShare cooperates with resellers in particular countries who sell RapidShare services under their own name and on their own account. You will find a list of resellers authorised by RapidShare here: Resellers.

RapidShare emphasises that resellers are not RapidShare employees and do not conclude contracts on behalf of RapidShare. Users who purchase a paid service via resellers enter into a contractual relationship exclusively with that particular reseller. RapidShare is not able to process customer service enquiries regarding payments processed by resellers.

Furthermore, RapidShare points out that there are various indivduals and companies who are not authorised resellers, but who nevertheless purport to sell paid services for RapidShare. For reasons of security we recommend that you make payments exclusively directly via the RapidShare website or via authorised resellers.

13. What is the renewal service?

Upon purchase of a paid service, RapidShare offers the possibility of activating a periodically repeated debit (henceforth: ‘renewal service’) for further payments.

If the renewal service is active, it will periodically debit your PayPal account for the amount, including VAT, agreed at the time of purchase.

14. How and when can you deactivate the renewal service?

The renewal service can be deactivated up to 24 hours before a paid service expires, electronically, under my Account. You can also deactivate the renewal service by E-Mail or telephone by contacting our support 3 business days before the expiration of a service.

15. What happens if there are insufficient funds in your PayPal account?

If the agreed purchase price cannot be deducted from a PayPal account for reasons on the part of the customer, the renewal service will be deactivated.

Cancellation and withdrawal

16. How and when can you cancel your account?

If your paid service expires, your account will automatically be converted to a free account. Free accounts can be immediately cancelled or deleted at any time via E-Mail to support@rapidshare.com or in writing to our postal address.

The renewal service can, as described above, be deactivated at any time in accordance with the terms listed in clause 14.

17. Withdrawing from the contract

You can withdraw from the contract within 30 days of the date of purchase and receive a proportional reimbursement. Applicable fund transfer fees will be charged to you. If our services have already been used, we will also have to charge a fee to offset the resulting costs.

Handling your data responsibly

18. Your responsibilities

We recommend that you back up all data that you store on RapidShare or access via our services on your computer or another mass storage device. RapidShare cannot guarantee that your data is protected from accidental damage, interference or loss.

RapidShare cannot be held liable for the loss of or damage to your data due to inappropriate management, or for costs or expenses related to the protection or recovery of your data.

19. Wrongful use of accounts

RapidShare wishes to offer you the most comprehensive service possible to meet your personal requirements. However, if we determine that our services are being used such that other users are disturbed or restricted in their scope of services, or if RapidShare is damaged, we reserve the right to end your use and to void the contract with you.

We reserve the right to suspend or to delete an account, thereby suspending or canceling the corresponding contract, if the frequency and amount of transferred data indicate that the account is being misused.

20. How our services should be used

In principle, users may store any file with RapidShare and distribute it, irrespective of the file format or file content. However, files whose possession is illegal in certain jurisdictions may not be stored, and no files whose distribution is illegal may be directly and/or indirectly distributed.

After having been notified, RapidShare shall immediately block access for users and/or groups involved in the distribution of such files. Such users shall have 30 days within which to object to this measure. If no objection is received after 30 days, the file shall be deleted permanently.

RapidShare is entitled to terminate without notice the contractual relationship with users who infringe these upload rules, deny access by the users concerned to its service and/or irrevocably delete the accounts of such users, including all their data.

21. Share functions

RapidShare offers functions with which you can share or publish your data for use by select third parties. We therefore urge you to carefully consider what data you wish to share or publish. RapidShare assumes no liability for damage that might arise from sharing your data. By granting write permission when sharing a folder, third parties can also store unwanted files in that folder. As a result, for your own security you should regularly check the content of the shared folder. Consider also that you can be held liable for the dissemination of data with illegal or copyright-protected content found in your shared folder.

22. Are you allowed to provide your access information to third parties?

We strongly recommend against giving your account information to third parties. You are fully legally responsible for every action undertaken with the aid of your account information. This also includes the passing on of login details to other cloud storage services or websites, who promise services in connection with the offers from RapidShare.

As a result, please inform us immediately if you have reason to suspect that a person has gained access to your data. Notwithstanding the above, naturally you can give other people access to the specially generated folders with the regular share function.

Beyond this it is prohibited to use login data in a way that would allow third parties and/or programmes to trigger automatic processes (e.g. upload, download, change account settings) to use this login data to access RapidShare.

RapidShare is not liable for damages arising from the negligent passing on of passwords, or unauthorised access to accounts, unless the unauthorised access was deliberately caused by RapidShare, or is the result of gross negligence on the part of RapidShare.

23. Can RapidShare allow others to access your data?

No. This arrangement prohibits the disclosure of your data by RapidShare itself or third parties. RapidShare may only deviate from this requirement if mandatory regulatory or judicial orders demand this.

RapidShare does not open or examine the data of its users and the data is neither catalogued by RapidShare, nor is the content listed anywhere. Only you, the owner of the files, control whether others may access the files, how files are accessed and which files may be accessed. RapidShare does not incorporate a search function allowing the querying of the RapidShare storage infrastructure.

24. Your account has been misused

In the event of theft or suspicion of misuse of your account, please contact our support immediately. In addition we request that you file a complaint to the local police in the event of illegal activity and, in the case of damage, contribute to the best of your knowledge to the resolution of the case and the mitigation of that damage.

25. Our services belong to us and we are proud of them

Therefore the commercial sale of accounts with or without paid services together with any other products and services and/or the implementation of our services in third-party software shall require RapidShare’s consent. RapidShare reserves the right to suspend accounts that are used by several persons not living in the same household, or which are used or resold commercially without RapidShare’s consent.