Andre Yoskowitz
10 Feb 2015 20:54
Once popular file sharing site RapidShare has announced it will shut down on March 31, 2015, with the site's administrators advising users to secure their data as soon as possible.
Started in 2002, the site became extremely popular as it allowed paying users to get fast access to unauthorized movies, music, games and any other files that were shared on warez sites. At one point, the site was one of the 50 most popular on the planet, controlling up to 5 percent of the Internet's total traffic.
Of course, such popularity also brought unwanted attention from the major copyright holders, and with that came lawsuits.
In the past few years, Rapidshare began taking down more pirated content and began to market itself as a cloud storage service. They even took down their free service, which allowed non-paying customers to download some files for free daily at slower speeds. The latter was the final nail in the coffin for the site, which could no longer compete with other sites in any respect.
R.I.P RapidShare.