<story><title>FileSonic disables all filesharing</title><url>http://www.filesonic.com/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>moe</author><text>&lt;i&gt;This is just a real observation.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your observation is correct, but I&apos;d interpret it differently: The answer should not be to ban MegaUpload.
The answer must be to provide legal services that are at least as convenient as MegaUpload.&lt;p&gt;There&apos;s a &lt;i&gt;huge&lt;/i&gt; market of people who pirate content not because they&apos;re unwilling to pay for it, but simply because it&apos;s either impossible or extremely inconvenient to get legally.</text></item><item><author>necro</author><text>Don&apos;t kill the messenger, but here is a real scenario.&lt;p&gt;My &quot;friend&quot; used to use megaupload, filesonic, and other services to watch all his tv content every night, and even paying for a megaupload account (never putting any money back to the creators of content). It was really convenient and the price was right.  Now without it, even in the last few days, the pain point has shifted enough that he started buying the seasons of shows he is interested in on itunes. (giving a cut to the creators)&lt;p&gt;There was a point even a year ago that he could get the latest film on piratebay so easily that there was no point going to the theatre. Now it seems a little harder to find the releases, or at least more inconvenient, so my friend has gone to the movies a lot more.&lt;p&gt;Now I personally get the whole internet freedom side of things, but at the same time I have seen my friend screw the content creators out of their cut because some middle man made it a lot more convenient to get the content.&lt;p&gt;I get the idea that some people have used these services for personal content, but if the business model of a service is _primarily_ around the sharing of copyrighted content then something should be done.  And especially if the service pays the uploader based on how popular the stolen content they upload is.&lt;p&gt;At least in my friends case, he spent $100 on itunes in the last day, _only_ because megaupload was not there, and there was enough pain to look for another source.&lt;p&gt;If there are millions of people out there like my friend, that is a lot more revenue for the creators/studios.&lt;p&gt;And no, I&apos;m not a troll from the film industry. This is just a real observation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>a5seo</author><text>&amp;#62; The answer must be to provide legal services that are at least as convenient as MegaUpload.&lt;p&gt;One thing that makes this hard in reality is that ANY service where people have to pay means people have to SHOP.  Which means they have to make decisions about what entertainment products to buy, and at what price.  And since these are &quot;experience goods&quot; you can&apos;t judge them until you&apos;ve paid for them.  In my book, that means means this particular type of &quot;shopping&quot; REALLY sucks.&lt;p&gt;So the fact that &quot;shopping-just-sucks&quot; (and especially for experience goods) is the TRUE friction that any hypothetical as-easy-as-Megaupload services need to overcome.  A big draw of Megaupload (I say this never having heard of it before this week) is you can consume whatever you want and there&apos;s no downside to a bad choice.&lt;p&gt;So I&apos;m not sure how any alternative service avoids the Shopping For Entertainment Products Sucks Syndrome unless they get some reasonably-priced all-you-can-eat plan that makes a lot (80%?) of commercial content available under one roof.</text></comment>
<story><title>FileSonic disables all filesharing</title><url>http://www.filesonic.com/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>moe</author><text>&lt;i&gt;This is just a real observation.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your observation is correct, but I&apos;d interpret it differently: The answer should not be to ban MegaUpload.
The answer must be to provide legal services that are at least as convenient as MegaUpload.&lt;p&gt;There&apos;s a &lt;i&gt;huge&lt;/i&gt; market of people who pirate content not because they&apos;re unwilling to pay for it, but simply because it&apos;s either impossible or extremely inconvenient to get legally.</text></item><item><author>necro</author><text>Don&apos;t kill the messenger, but here is a real scenario.&lt;p&gt;My &quot;friend&quot; used to use megaupload, filesonic, and other services to watch all his tv content every night, and even paying for a megaupload account (never putting any money back to the creators of content). It was really convenient and the price was right.  Now without it, even in the last few days, the pain point has shifted enough that he started buying the seasons of shows he is interested in on itunes. (giving a cut to the creators)&lt;p&gt;There was a point even a year ago that he could get the latest film on piratebay so easily that there was no point going to the theatre. Now it seems a little harder to find the releases, or at least more inconvenient, so my friend has gone to the movies a lot more.&lt;p&gt;Now I personally get the whole internet freedom side of things, but at the same time I have seen my friend screw the content creators out of their cut because some middle man made it a lot more convenient to get the content.&lt;p&gt;I get the idea that some people have used these services for personal content, but if the business model of a service is _primarily_ around the sharing of copyrighted content then something should be done.  And especially if the service pays the uploader based on how popular the stolen content they upload is.&lt;p&gt;At least in my friends case, he spent $100 on itunes in the last day, _only_ because megaupload was not there, and there was enough pain to look for another source.&lt;p&gt;If there are millions of people out there like my friend, that is a lot more revenue for the creators/studios.&lt;p&gt;And no, I&apos;m not a troll from the film industry. This is just a real observation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dereg</author><text>While there is a large black market of people pirating content, it is unclear as to whether that market would be willing to enter the legal market at any price point.&lt;p&gt;Improving the distribution system is not a source of explosive growth, rather, it is I disagree with your assertion that the content industry is requisite for mere survival industry. There&apos;s no potential for explosive growth because piracy is an income problem, not an internet problem. Cracking down on file-sharing sites will not solve the problem because the illegal activity merely shifts elsewhere. Improving distribution systems will not solve the problem because free is still cheaper than not-free.</text></comment>