Web236 Illegal Sharing

How much Peer-to-Peer file sharing affects your website would be based off of what kinds of products you offer. Peer-to-peer sharing is only a threat to those companies that offer digital files (computer software, audio files, video files) that are desired by the customer that either doesn't want to pay for them, or doesn't have the means to pay for them. The music industry reached its annual revenue peak in 1999 at $14.6 billion dollars, not so coincidentally Napster launched that same year, and each year afterwards the annual revenue declined until 2008 it hit $8.5 billion. The cause of this was due to an outdated business model that attempted to force the consumer to purchase more expensive albums, rather than the singles that they may want.

As a company that offers software or multimedia files, you have to be conscious of the market that you are attempting to reach, and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly. This means making music available as singles, or releasing it as part of a streaming service that rely's on advertisements to make your money. Personally I don't believe that you will ever stamp out P2P file sharing as a whole, there are simply too many people that don't want to pay exorbant prices for software / music.

I like Adobe's new strategy of making their software package available as a cloud service. I subscribed to their student package and have access to the entirety of their software (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, AfterEffects, etc.) for only $20 a month. This turns me into a consumer rather than having to use P2P in order to get the software that I want.