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Business News Digital
RapidShare to close
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 11 February 2015
Long before the feds emerged on the horizon at dawn ready to stamp file-transfer service MegaUpload off the internet on the grounds it was a primarily a hub for rampant copyright infringement, copyright owners in Europe were busy taking RapidShare to court, a similar service that was similarly accused of enabling music, movie and software piracy.
RapidShare initially hit back at allegations of copyright infringement, but subsequently introduced a raft of refinements to its platform to hinder those using it primarily to share or access copyright infringing content. Which pleased the copyright owners, but pissed off a lot of RapidShare users.
Many of those users promptly jumped ship to file-transfer platforms with a more lax attitude/approach to piracy, resulting in flagging revenues and quite a bit of downsizing behind the scenes at the Swiss company. And it’s assumed that that decline in the company’s fortunes is behind the news that the RapidShare platform will go offline at the end of March.
Those using the service to store and share (though mainly store these days) their own digital files have been told they should download all their content in the next six weeks, because the service will disappear on 31 Mar, and after that date any files left on its servers will be deleted.
Which is sad for all involved in the company. Though rights owners would likely argue that RapidShare’s demise as a result of introducing strict anti-piracy systems simply proves that its original success was down to the fact it was such a good source of unlicensed music and movies.
