I don't know if people in our industry actually realize the SIZE of these online filesharing websites and their impact on our industry. Back in 2000 we had the same thing only back then these ended up in a big failure mostly from lack of revenue. Today, they seem to be keeping afloat with ad revenue generated by the dominant warez/porn traffic.
Megaupload: Alexa Rank 10!
Rapidshare: Alexa 13!
Sendspace: Alexa 79
Rapidshare.de: Alexa 122
Zshare: Alexa Rank 354
For those that don't understand Alexa ranks, Rapidshare has more traffic/impressions than Ebay! The lower the alexa number the higher the traffic (not linearly). Just to compare with 'adult': thehun's alexa is about 1000!
There's not just these, there's dozens of these sites with more popping up every day. And unlike torrents, there is a easy and fast way to get unlimited downloads with these sites, usually via Paypal or another payment.
The DMCA act is our enemy here. It allows these guys to share our content without any responsability. They cannot be stopped because they are not doing the 'illegal' act according to the DMCA, but their users are. So a program must first FIND any links that share their content (usually posted on forums, emails etc.) and then send a DMCA notice. At that point the filesharing website must take down the content. What happens after? The user will just upload again either to the same site or a different file sharing site. And we go back to the vicious circle. The webmaster program cannot make any money through this to make up for the costs of scouting the links and the $500/DMCA letter.