Swiss File Hosting Site RapidShare to Shut Down Next Month

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This article originally appeared at The WHIR

Popular file hosting site RapidShare announced on Tuesday that it will shut down at the end of March, and accounts will be automatically deleted on Mar. 31, 2015.

The company is encouraging users to back up their content prior to that date because they won’t have access to any data stored on the service after next month.

According to a report by TorrentFreak, RapidShare hasn’t given an official reason for its closure but it’s suspected that the company’s efforts over the last few years to crackdown on pirated content on its service may have something to do with it.

RapidShare was founded in 2002 in Switzerland and built itself into one of the most popular file-hosting services online. It became an attractive place to host copy-infringing material, particularly as its servers were hosted outside of the US.

In recent years, RapidShare made a considerable effort to deter piracy and copyright infringement. In 2012, RapidShare changed its traffic policies, placing a daily cap on outbound traffic.

In 2013, RapidShare laid off 45 of its 60 employees as part of a cost-cutting measure to improve its financial situation.

A recent study noted that up to 78 percent of the material in cyberlockers infringes on copyrights, which suggests RapidShare was far from the only site of its kind storing infringing material.

Encryption is believed to at least partially address provider liability and user privacy.Mega, the encrypted cloud storage service founded by MegaUpload’s Kim Dotcom, is relying on this model to protect it from authorities that may target its service based on the type of content hosted by its users.

This article originally appeared at: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/swiss-file-hosting-site-rapidshare-shut-next-month