Rapidshare: Former illegal file haven now knocking boots with Warner Bros.

Anyone who as at any point in the last decade downloaded files of questionable origins will know Rapidshare was one of the places to either make files available or to download said files. It seems though that the company has decided that the time has come to play on the legal side of the fence and has quietly been building up a legal movie downloading site called RapidMovies.

Not only are they going legit but Janko Roettgers over at NewTeeVee is reporting that they have signed a major deal with Warner Bros. to distribute their movies online. Apparently they also have some big plans for the site (like we didn’t know they would be saying that)

Rapidshare has big plans for its RapidMovies platform. The company told me it’s working on a payment system to allow the sale of movie downloads. It already has a billing relationship with a large number of users who pay to get better download speeds and upload privileges. The company also recently started to sell prepaid cards through select retailers in Germany, and it actually has a rewards program in place which could potentially be used to trade credits earned for attracting new users for movie downloads.

To try and help with their image Transformation Rapidshare has been working with rights holders to make it easier to place take-down notices from the Rapidshare site itself. This is a good idea especially in light of their on-going court battle with German music rights group GEMA which saw them being order to take down 5,000 songs from its servers.

At this point the RapidMovie site is only carrying movie trailers as the company gets all the kinks worked out of their system and I would assume try to ink more industry deals.