Who benefits from illegal file sharing?
How illegal downloading of music works is probably easier to explain if you follow back the supply chain from the consumer. Of course, there are also more philosophical implications from looking at things this way, and it does appear as though the illegal system is, in large part, demand-driven. The basic scenario involves someone who is looking for music to download for free–an obvious benefit over having to pay for the music. The downloader has quite a few options for getting new music, such as using software to connect to a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, file sharing forums, browsing blogs, searching on “pirate” sites, and simply asking for something via instant messaging (IM). The supplier may change, but the thing that does remain constant is that all the downloads go via a connection that is provided by the the downloader’s internet service provider (ISP). On the other end, there may be someone connecting via their own ISP, or a site that is on the network of a hosting company (HC)
