RapidShare, has announced that it will shut down next month. There was no reason given but it is suspected that the loss of the majority of its users after the implementation of the draconian anti-piracy measures is likely for this shutdown. RapidShare had many complicated legal battles with entertainment companies that wanted to hold the Rapidshare liable for the actions of its users, further complicating this was the U.S. Government labeling Rapidshare as a “notorious market.”. Rapidshare made tremendous efforts to cooperate with copyright holders and limit copyright infringements. They even adopted one of the most restrictive sharing policies while (re)branding itself as a personal cloud storage service. The anti-piracy measures seemed appeased the legal bombardment levied against them, but RapidShare’s visitor numbers plunged and consequently those lower visitor numbers meant dwindling advertising revenues which eventually cost most of RapidShare’s employees their jobs. Five years ago Rapidshare was one of the 50 most-visited sites on the Internet, with millions of page-views per month, and in a just a few weeks it will be a distant memory like the Napsters of the ever changing Internet terrain.
