Downloading files from FileSonic via terminal without a premium account

Question

I found various blogs on the internet about how to download a file from FileSonic, Hotfile, Rapidshare, etc. from a Linux terminal if you have a premium account.

Is there any way to download a file from those providers and other similar sites from a terminal without a premium account?

Answer 1

I've personally never gotten it to install properly (granted, I tried quite a long time back), but plowshare is worth a look.

It's a shell script that allows for downloading and uploading to file hosting sites. Should it be necessary to input a CAPTCHA, you can use a command line image viewer to display it, or it uses automatic recognition.

Answer 2

That depends.

If the site in questions requires you to solve a captcha, it is impossible to download a file using only the terminal. The captcha (if it's a good one) needs to be displayed to a human in order to get solved and the terminal cannot display images.

If it does not need a captcha, it is indeed possible.

There are some browser-based interfaces that achieve something similar (e. g. Rapid Leech) using PHP. For those sites that do not require a captcha, the code could be adapted to run from a terminal.