Piracy Lost Sales Debate

Why would I want to pirate when the company making it will take me money?

It's been proven that people who pirate also buy more media than those who don't.Besides, if I was never going to buy it in the first place because you're charging too much, you've lost nothing if I pirate your product.A victimless crime.

This is the same situation as with the media industry, e.g. music and movies and piracy. Studies have shown that people who pirate wouldn't buy the product even if they had the opportunity (i.e. is if they had the money or if it was easy to buy). So I guess the content is not good enough.

In short: Give the people what they want and they will pay you.If only it were so simple. Today you can buy virtually any media electronically. Services like Netflix, Rdio, Spotify, iTunes and others allow for enormous content enjoyment at a very reasonable price, with a couple of mouse clicks. Steam and Origin, App Stores and Android Markets exist with countless software options for incredibly low prices.Yet piracy is still absolutely rampant. We're being lectured to by thieves who

I guess they'd rather have people pirate it then.

Same way with piracy. Most people who are pirating content weren't a potential customer in the first place.

I want to buy it but they won't let me therefore my pirate copy results in zero lost revenue for them.

The statistic that 95% of pirated music would not have been purchased, had piracy not been an option should be mentioned more often. The fact that someone violates copyright by pulling down the complete beach boys does not suggest that he would have purchased a $100 box set. The ease of piracy is the impetus. He would have happily gone without the product.

If someone pirates 100 60$ games it does not mean that had piracy been impossible they would have spent 6000$ on those games

It's true that some pirates would have paid if they hadn't been able to pirate. But that's not the whole story: sometimes getting media for free makes people more inclined to buy it or related media later. I've heard on Hacker News that free music distributions can create an audience for live concerts. Another example is "freemium" software and services. At least one study (that I'm too lazy to look up) found that some people will pirate music to try it and then buy it if they like it. So you ca