One way to find out is to look at Alexa’s comparison chart. Alexa computes a site’s global and local rank from data gathered by its toolbar and a number of additional sources. While not 100% accurate, it can give an indication of a site’s traffic performance over time.

Even better, you can key in up to four competitive sites to compare their performance with the selected site. When you do that for Megaupload, and the four sites ThePiratebay, Rapidshare, Mediafire and Filesonic, you come up with the following graph.

Megaupload was shut down on January 20, and you can see a big drop shortly thereafter (the blue line). The site stayed on a high level nevertheless. This is explained by users still clicking on links leading to the site. While these links return a 404 error, Alexa may still count the visits. It is likely that the site will slowly drop to 0 over the coming months.

You also see that Filesonic experienced a drop. This is because of the site’s announcement that they would block the site’s file sharing component.

The Piratebay on the other hand saw a huge increase in daily reach a few days after the takedown. The site went over the 1.5 daily reach mark in percent which it never crossed before in January. Mediafire saw a big jump in traffic as well during that same time. Rapidshare, another file hosting company saw a lighter increase.

This is no proof obviously, and traffic may have increased because of other reasons. It is however likely that Megaupload and Filesonic users simply moved on to use other services. And those are not only file hosting related, considering that The Piratebay’s traffic increased as well. What’s your take on the matter?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation in cooperation with Carpathia Hosting has started the Mega Retrieval project. The main purpose of the project is to connect affected end-users from the United States with the EFF to assess options.

It is not clear at this point in time if the EFF and its attorneys can aid Megaupload users in the retrieval of files that they have uploaded to the service. Affected users are asked to contact the EFF (an email address is provided on the Mega Retrieval website).

f you believe you are one of these users, are based in the United States, and are looking for legal help to retrieve your data, please email the best contact information for you to the EFF at:

Megauploadmissing@eff.org

The page notes that users shall not send any details of materials they have uploaded. It is likely that this initial step is needed to assess the number of users who are affected by the Megaupload take down.

Affected users should not get their hopes up to high though, as it is not clear at this point in time if anything can be done to prevent the deletion of all server data.

It may also be difficulty for users to come up with additional information if requested. While they may be able to look up their account name, they may have troubles listing the files that they have uploaded to the service.

What’s your take on the development?

Internet users who have been using Megaupload regularly or sporadically for file hosting or downloads are now left with the task of finding a comparable service that they can use for these operations.

Probably one of the first file hosts to be mentioned in this regard is Filesonic, as it is providing the same upload size limit of 1 Gigabyte per file and unlimited storage. The site has an affiliate program that rewards affiliate for bringing new users to the site or for downloads. Please note that you need an account before you can start to upload files to the service.

MediaFire on the other hand is a free and simple file host. The biggest advantage of the service is that you can upload files right away without having to create an account first. The maximum file size for free accounts is 200 Megabytes which is considerably lower than the 1 Gigabyte supported by Filesonic.

Rapidshare is another popular file hosting service. It too requires you to create an account before you can start hosting files on the Rapidshare server. Rapidshare has no file size limitations when it comes to uploading files to the server. Free users have to endure wait times and slower download speeds though on the download side of things.

Oron lets you upload files with a size of up to 400 Megabytes directly on the site’s frontpage. Registered users can upload files with a size of up to 1024 Megabytes, which is also the maximum download size for free and registered users of the service. The site has an affiliate program in place that rewards uploaders and sites in various ways, for instance by paying per download or sale.

Here is a selection of additional hosts that you can use to upload files to or earn money from:

• Multishare – Up to 5120 Megabytes, 3 files max per upload. Pays 67% of all premium sales and rebills.
• Content Cooperation – Pays for a variety of services, including uploading or promoting files.
• Uploading – Files with a maximum size of 5 Gigabyte can be uploaded to the file hosting service. Multiple revenue models available including pay per download or sale.

Which file hosting service would you recommend as a Megaupload alternative? Lets hear some suggestions in the comments.

Seven members of the site and two corporations – Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited – were indicted by a grand jury in Virgina, and charged “with engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement”.

Arrests have been made in New Zealand, were Megaupload founder Kim Schmitz and three others were arrested at the request of US officials. According to The Verge, a total of 20 search warrants have been issued in the US and eight other countries including The Netherlands, Germany, Canada and Australia. In addition, assets worth more than $50 million US Dollars have been seized as well as 18 domain names associated with the business.

Users who try to open the Megaupload website, any of the site’s inner pages, hosted files or one of the related domain names will notice that all connections time out. Megaupload, which has been listed as one of the top 100 sites at Alexa, and its cousin site Megavideo, in the sub 200 rankings, have been two of the most popular file sharing sites on the Internet.

The core question that many Internet users will have right now is if this will affect other file sharing services like Rapidshare as well.

If you read the Department of Justice press release thoroughly you will notice that much of it can be applied to nearly every popular file sharing site on the Internet.

• A business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download
• A structure to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded
• A rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites.

Will we see a ripple effect? What’s your take? (via Neowin)

Update: The Department of Justice website, as well as several music industry related websites are currently targeted by Anonymous as a response to the take down of Megaupload. More information here at The Next Web.

File hosts obviously are interested that users stay on their websites for as long as possible to earn from advertisements, make the site more attractive to advertisers and to sell their premium accounts to users who are not patient enough to wait. Nearly every file hosting site uses times, bandwidth limitations and other means to achieve these goals.

Extension developers on the other hand have to cope with ever changing scripts on the sites. File hosts change technicalities regularly to break extensions and other tools that offer faster downloads from their servers.

It will therefor be only a matter of time until the Google Chrome extension Megaupload Instant Download Helper needs to be updated. The extension for now offers to speed up downloads at the popular file hosting site Megaupload by bypassing the wait time limit that is imposed on free users.

The functionality of the website is not changed, which means that the regular download button is displayed once the countdown has reached zero. That may be helpful if the extension fails to display the download directly.

Megaupload Instant Download Helper can be installed directly from the Google Chrome Extensions gallery.

The extension tries to start downloads on Megaupload download pages automatically. Users who want to download files see the save as dialog directly even if the time is still counting down.

Alternatives are available for other browsers. Opera users may want to take a closer look at the Opera Download Helper extension, Firefox users at the userscripts Megaupload Automatic Downloader or Megaupload Automatizador Plus!.

Download Helper is a new Opera extension that improves the downloading of files from specific file hosting sites. The Opera extension supports several popular file hosting services including Hotfile, Megaupload, Depositfiles, 4Shared and Mediafire.

Here are the effects on the file hosting sites:

• On Megaupload.com it will automatically start download after the time ends.
• On Hotfile.com it will popup window where you can type captcha and download link will appear without waiting.
• On Depositfiles.com it will automatically choose Free download and automatically start download without
  waiting 60 seconds to download file.
• On 4Shared.com it will automatically start download after the time ends.
• On Mediafire.com it will automatically start download.

The extension will start to download the selected file automatically once the wait time is over on three of the five file hosts. It can bypass the wait time on Hotfile and Depositfiles making it an interesting extension for users who download files from Hotfile or Depositfiles regularly.

Download Helper supports additional Georgian file hosts as well allowing the user to download files instantly from all supported file hosts.

Opera users who use at least one of the supported file hosts on a regular basis might want to test the Download Helper Opera add-on. Please take note that add-ons only work in Opera 11 and later.

These services are interesting even though they are paid service. They both basically act as a proxy to download from various file hosting services like Rapidshare, Megaupload, Hotfiles or Filefactory.

Internet users who download regularly from multiple file hosting sites may like the idea to use one site for all the downloads, instead of the file hosting sites themselves.

Leechpack is offering a short introductory video of their service. Users can paste links that point to supported file hosting sites in the Leechpack interface to let the service download those files from the file hosts. Once the files have been downloaded they become available to the user who is now able to download them from the site.

LeechPack: The superior choice in filesharing! from LeechPack on Vimeo.

Both services work similar in this regard, just copy and paste links into the form and download the files once they have been downloaded by the downloading service.

Now, both services are free to sign up with offer no trial transfer limit at this point, at least not when signing up directly on the websites. The cheapest accounts cost €3,99 at DownloadNow and 6,99€ at Leechget. Both come with traffic limitations, 5 Gigabytes plus 1 Gigabyte per day at DownloadNow and 60 Gigabytes and 30 Gigabytes disk space at Leechpack.

To put this into perspective, Rapidshare users get 150 Gigabytes of traffic for 5,99€ per month. But the main benefit of using a service like DownloadNow or Leechpack is not necessarily linked to being able to download a lot. It is the convenience of being able to download from all supported file hosting companies without having to fill out captchas or waiting for downloads to start.

Lets take a closer look at the supported services:

Leechpack supports Netloads, File Factory, Freakshare, x7, EasyShare, FileServeNew!, Rapidshare, Megaupload, Depositfiles, Megashares, Storage.to, Uploadbox, Uploaded.to, FileSonicNew! and torrent downloads.

DownloadNow in contrast supports hotfile, megaupload, uploaded.to, netload, easy-share, uploading, filefactory, depositfiles, megashares, filesonic and fileserver.

Some file hosting services are supported by both proxy downloaders. Leechpack unique is the ability to download torrents (which are seeded until a 1:1 ratio is reached).

So, who would use a service like this? Users who want to download files from multiple file hosting sites obviously come to mind. But it is also possible to use at least the Leechpack service as a seedbox for torrents. Then again, this comes at a price and I personally am not sure if users would opt in for one of those services, especially if they tend to download files majorly from one specific file hosting site.

Would I personally use one of the services? No, I do not think so. Mainly because I’m not download files from file hosting sites, or only rarely at most. Users who download from a lot of supported file hosting sites could consider it, especially if they are already paying the file hosting service directly.

What’s your take on this kind of services? Let me know in the comments.

Megaupload is one of the most popular file hosting sites on the Internet making it a prime target for automatic downloaders.

File host downloaders come in different types. There are software programs like JDownloader that run on the desktop, web browser add-ons like Skipscreen and userscripts like Megaupload Automatizador Plus!.

The Megaupload userscript has been updated two days ago. It was not working at all before this thanks to changes the Megaupload developers had made on their file hosting site.

The script is now working again properly. It automates the whole downloading process from Megaupload. The script only works in Firefox with Greasemonkey installed at the moment, a test installation in Google Chrome did not work properly at this time.

All it takes to download a file from Megaupload is to load the url in the web browser. The script will automatically fill out the captcha and initiate the download once the short wait time is over.

It is a Spanish script as you can see but that should not keep non-Spanish speaking users away as there is no interaction required.

Megaupload users who do not use a software program like JDownloader to download from Megaupload and use the Firefox web browser might want to try out the Megaupload script to automate their downloads from the popular file hosting site.

Other options include copying and pasting one or multiple links into the interface. The download manager also offers to add a download option into the Internet Explorer menu.

Urls that are added to Mipony are listed in the queue. Mipony will automatically perform a check and display various important information that it discovers including a files availability, size and file name.

Some or all of the files in the queue can then be added to the download queue. Mipony will automatically display the terms of service of every file hosting website on the first download. These terms need to be accepted before downloads are started for that file hosting service.

The configuration contains options and settings to change the number of simultaneous downloads, the interface language and the ability to add premium account information for Rapidshare, Megaupload and Hotfile.

Mipony can furthermore join files and retry downloads. It also comes with a browser so that no external web browser is needed to search for files on these file hosting websites. Most users on the other hand might prefer to use an external web browser as the included browser is very basic and seems to use the Internet Explorer engine.

Check out our Rapidshare Search article if you want to take a closer look at some of the available options to search this popular file host.

Mipony is compatible with most versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Megaupload has two “protections” in place before a normal user can download files. The first is a captcha while the second is a countdown timer. This means that users need to enter a captcha whenever they want to download a file from the file hosting website. Even worse, they also have to wait some time before the download becomes available.

Muautolink solves both problems at once. It will immediately display a file download window when the user opens a Megaupload download page in the Firefox web browser. It bypasses the Megaupload captcha and countdown completely.

Best of all: It even works if the Megaupload website is embedded in another website like several Megaupload search services have implemented it. Muautolink is an experimental Firefox add-on for all versions of the web browse (from 2.x to 3.7x). It can be downloaded from the official Mozilla Firefox website.

Skip Screen is a extension for the Firefox web browser that skips those pages on various websites. The add-on is currently supporting the following nine file hosting websites: Rapidshare, zShare, MediaFire, Megaupload, Sharebee, Depositfiles, Sendspace, Divshare and Linkbucks.

The add-on for the web browser will automatically skip those pages. A message will be displayed above the Firefox status bar to give the user an indication that pages were skipped. Some file hosters do still require user action to start the download of the files while some will instantly display the save file browser to download the file to the local computer. This is for instance at Depositfiles the case. The developer of the Firefox extension is encouraging users to suggest websites that make use of unnecessary pages.

The add-on is currently experimental which means users need to log into the Mozilla website to download and install the add-on.

The add-on MU Bundle for the web browser Firefox gets rid of the time limit at the Megaupload website. It will also initiate the download of the file automatically without user input. The process in its entirety looks like the following: The user opens a page on the Megaupload website that will initiate a file download. A captcha is displayed which has to be completed to process. Everything after this step becomes automatic thanks to the Firefox add-on.

The time limit will be skipped instantly. The next page contains download links for regular and premium users. The add-on will automatically initiate a non premium download of the file at the file hoster’s website. This will spawn a download window which can be used to save the file on the local computer system.

The add-on for the web browser Firefox is currently rated as experimental which means that an account at the official Mozilla website is required to download and install it.

Update: The add-on has been discontinued. A solid alternative is the desktop downloader JDownloader.

The file upload service works by selecting the mirror sites that the file should be uploaded to in the first step. After that the file has to be uploaded to the Gazup servers. It is alternatively possible to pick the remote upload option instead which makes it possible to paste urls that point to files in a form which get then downloaded by Gazup. Once the files have been uploaded either way they get distributed by Gazup to the selected file hosts.

This is shown visually on a new page listing the current upload status of each individual file host. The download links are shown when an upload has finished successfully. This link can be copied and pasted as usual.

Gazup does offer special sharing links for forums, websites and friends. It is a simple code that can be embedded in the context. It does link to the main Gazup page where the user has the option to select one of the available file hosts mirrors. This is excellent for users who regularly upload files for forums and websites and want to make sure that the files are still available after some time.

via Download Squad.

Megaupload is a file hosting service on the Internet that is displaying a captcha before the download link of a file will be shown on their website. The captcha is probably one of the easiest to recognize and fill out, pretty useless from the standpoint of defeating bots and annoying to users who download files from Megaupload regularly.

Megaupload auto-fill captcha is a Greasemonkey script for Mozille Firefox (and other compatible browsers) that will automatically fill out and send the captcha on Megaupload. This essentially means that the user does not have to enter the captcha nor click on a button to send it to the Megaupload server.

It practically feels as if there was not a captcha on Megaupload at all. A short explanation of Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that can be installed just like any other extension in Firefox. Once the extension is installed it is possible to add so called userscripts to the web browser.

Those scripts are coded in JavaScript and change the behavior and look and feel of websites automatically.

Multiple File Storage sites can be selected from the list which contains currently 32 different websites. Several test uploads to those File Storage sites revealed that several of them are not working correctly currently. An error message is displayed when that is happening.

A Successful upload to a file storage sites on the other hand writes an upload log which contains the links to the files uploaded. The software provides four options that can be checked, for instance to protect links by automatically using lix.in for it or to retry failed downloads.

Proxy Servers are supported as well as Premium accounts. The greatest benefit of File Uploader is that it is easy to use. It only takes a matter of seconds to start uploading to various file storage sites. Bad is that several sites are not working properly currently and that the files have to be uploaded to each file storage site separately.

RapidSpread and TinyLoad are two services that basically provide the same service. The user can upload a file and they start spreading it around to multiple file hosts. The major difference between the two services is as to how that is managed. Rapidspread does not allow the selection of file hosts but spreads the uploaded files to all file hosts that it has in its database. The ten file hosts currently in the database include Rapidshare, Sendspace and DepositFiles.

A profile page for every uploaded file is created which can be accessed to reveal the links to the various file hosts the file has been spread to.

TinyLoad on the other hand gives the user more choice. He can select the file hosts from a selection of 12 including Megaupload, Rapidshare and DivShare. Another difference is a file filter that is being used by TinyLoad to prevent that certain file types are being uploaded. Rapidspread did not have a problem with an executable file whereas TinyLoad did reject the file.

MassMirror: I was quite impressed with this service until I got to the end. Uploading a file was a nice experience. I got a progress bar which told me how much of my file was uploaded, the time left, and the upload speed I was getting. MassMirror has more file-hosting sites covered as well. A file will be hosted on Rapidshare, Picshome, 4filehosting, Megaupload, Fileinsanity, Fastuploading, and Zshare. File size limits are bigger too with the site allowing you to upload files up to 1 GB big. The bad part: When I tried to upload a file, it got stuck at the part where the file is sent to the other sites. I don’t know if the site was down or something but my file just wouldn’t get past the final stage.

Fileducky: Fileducky uploads your file to Badongo, Rapidshare, Sendspace, and Zshare as long as it is under the 100 MB size limit. The upload speed was fine and the progress bar at least had a percentage element but nothing else.

Sharebee: Like Fileducky, Sharebee supports 4 sites namely Rapidshare, Megaupload, Zshare, and Badongo. It too has a 100 MB file size limit but has a better progress bar than Fileducky. When you upload a file on Sharebee, you can see the upload speed, amount of file uploaded, and time left.

The verdict. Sharebee was the easiest to use, followed by Fileducky. If MassMirror can get their act together, they’d definitely be at the top of my list. What about you? Which service would you use and why? Or do you prefer to use just one file-hosting site? Let me know in the comments.

Uploading files to many sites is a tedious task. You’ll have to visit each site and individually upload your file there. This is a time-consuming and irritating task. It would be so much better for you to upload the file once and watch it show up on multiple sites.

Well, that’s exactly what Uploadjockey does. This site allows you to upload a file once and then they put that file on other hosting sites. Uploadjockey will put your file on Rapidshare, Badongo, Megaupload, Zshare, Sendspace, and Depositfiles.

This is quite a good concept. Many file hosting sites have limitations like waiting time between downloads, slots per country, etc. This way, if you don’t get the file off one site, you can try another one. For the uploader, all you have to do is upload the file once.

The site isn’t perfect. For starters, you have the 100 MB file limit. But I think this has more to do with the fact that the sites it supports have a file size limit. Also, while uploading a file, there is no way to tell how fast you are uploading. A progress bar does appear but there’s no mention of speed or how much of the file has been uploaded so far.

I don’t know why someone would want to host files on Rapidshare, Megaupload, etc. that have so many restrictions. I usually prefer to use MediaFire, which I feel is far better. But who knows, the service may add other sites in future.

What do you think of Uploadjockey? Would you use this service? Have you come across something similar? What’s your favorite file-hosting site? Let me know in the comments.

Update: The file upload service does not seem to exist anymore. Check out Neembu Uploader, File Upload Tool To Upload Files To Multiple File Hosters or Multi Uni Uploader, Upload Files To File Hosters for two software alternatives or Mirror Creator for an online service that supports spreading a file to multiple file hosts.

Once you click on the bookmark a small form opens waiting for user input. Just enter a search string and all file hosters mentioned in the Javascript will be searched for that string. The script uses advanced Google search parameters to find what you are looking for and you naturally could just use Google for the same results.

The advantage of the bookmarklet is that you just have to click a bookmark to perform the search which means less typing. Please add the following code in one line as a bookmark. Right-click the url and select bookmark this link. You can also copy and paste the code into the address bar to see how it works.

Free File Host Search

The author of the Megaupload premium links generator is using his own – or so he says – premium account to generate the links for everyone. My first thoughts was that this had to be against the Terms of Service but a quick lookup did not reveal a passage that it would be indeed illegal.

I was only able to find out that the owner of the premium account would be liable for all the actions that someone else would do with his premium account which is where I would have stopped creating the websites or make it private.

The system itself is pretty straightforward. You paste the Megaupload link into the form and it will generate a premium link. Use that premium link to download the file which should bypass all restrictions for non-premium users.

I’m not sure how long the Freemu will be around but it is currently working nicely.