And for those who don't pay, they get to look at ads while waiting to download. So, here you have file-hosting sites making money off of people who pay them per-month (or whatever payment tier they choose) to have something like unlimited, unthrottled access to files. It's not enough to get something for free. Now, it's important to clarify that, for many these days, piracy is about far more than just getting something for free it's about getting something for free as quickly and conveniently as possible. And how do you make that go away? By becoming a paid member of the site: 'FASTER DOWNLOADS! UNLIMITED PARALLEL DOWNLOADS! DOWNLOAD FILES LARGER THAN 1GB!' Now, all of these sites allow you to download files from them for free, but there's typically a wait or some sort of inconvenience. But this isn't a world without piracy, so what people tend to upload is - you guessed it - pirated content. In a world without piracy, the types of files one might upload would be documents to share with coworkers, videos to share with others, etc. If you've never heard of them, they're basically Web sites that allow you to upload files to them so that you can share them with others. The specific monetization methods for each service/site differ, but they all consist of some combination of the following:įile-hosting Web sites: These are sites like RapidShare, FileServe, FileSonic, Hotfile, Megaupload, etc. They are both essential for one another to function in such a profitable manner, and man, oh, man, do they ever make a lot of money doing what they do.

The combination of these two types of sites is like a one-two punch resulting in a knockout. The days of file-sharing services like Napster and Kazaa are long-gone while torrents reign supreme, but there's a completely different method of piracy that has been running steadily for years and turning a sizable profit all the while: file-hosting and link-sharing Web sites. In fact, it's something we're so familiar with, that it has become a regular part of many of our lives - despite examples having been made along the way of your everyday Joe/Jill. It's an all-too-familiar topic that has been beaten into the ground such that it doesn't really faze anyone anymore.

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