Commercial Networks and File-sharing Networks: Competition or Complementarity?

Facing the massive popularity of file-sharing networks, producers and distributors see in digital consumption a threat to their own activity. This article aims to analyze if market organizational models and organizational models based upon the file-sharing activity may be either substituted or complementary. By underlining the importance of innovation in valuating the two activities, we show the existence of both positive and negative externalities whose overall effect underlines retroaction and interdependence between activities differing in their organizational models.