One of the world’s most recognisable torrent sites, Rapidshare, is shutting down next month.
The owners of the Switzerland-based portal – which still attracts hundreds of thousands of users – announced their decision last night.
They didn’t give a reason for the closure, but it comes after years of severe anti-piracy measures around the world that have considerably hurt Rapidshare’s user base.
A message from the site owners said: “Dear RapidShare Customers. Kindly note that RapidShare will stop the active service on March 31st, 2015. Extensions of STANDARD PLUS and PREMIUM will be possible until February 28th, 2015. We strongly recommend all customers to secure their data. After March 31st, 2015 all accounts will no longer be accessible and will be deleted automatically… Thank you for many years of trust.”
Founded in 2002, Rapidshare recently attempted to ‘go legit’, rebranding itself as a cloud locker and placing restrictions on what users could share on the platform.
It was previously branded a ‘notorious market’ by the RIAA in America and fought numerous copyright infringement cases against entertainment companies around the world.
In 2012, it was ordered to work harder to improve its anti-piracy efforts by a German court as a result of a case brought by video games developer Atari.Music Business Worldwide
