[Hellmark]

If you give people a easy, affordable way to purchase things legally, they'll do it more often than not. The ones who won't typically are ones who would have never bought it if piracy were not an option. Those are ones you cannot honestly count in with the loss figures. Can you get a number on who or how many there are in that class, not really, best you can do is to make it as easy as possible for people to be legit. The media corporations, of software, music, movie and text, all fail to understand this.

Have I pirated? Yes, mostly when I was younger. Did I later go out and buy copies of what I pirated? Most of it. Some of it I thought sucked, and usually just deleted it before finishing. Some artists I found out about only because of piracy. For instance, the Reverend Horton Heat I discovered through piracy, and afterwards went out and bought all of his albums, went to see in concert now three times, and buy his other merch.

Now I don't pirate much. Things are easier to get, legally. The only time in recent memory that I have gone to the darknet is to find out of print, not available as ebook, works. If it was available to buy, I'd have gladly bought it.