Unauthorised sharing through P2P networks: A digital pollution?

Cyberspace is far from being a closed world. Unauthorized sharing of copyrighted contents is often claimed to affect new online business. Unfortunately, there are not enough empirical studies that highlight its actual impact. Most of the time, their results do not converge. This paper identifies several scenarios about the economic consequences of unauthorized sharing. In each case, existing arrangements – property rights, indirect liability, state subsidies, and so on – are compared in order to determine the most efficient one, i.e. the arrangement from which copyright holders, content users and online intermediaries can equally benefit at the lowest social cost. Finally, the paper contends that far from being an actual threat for copyright industries, P2P should be conceived as a major innovation in harmony with current economic, social and cultural evolutions.