Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
Okay, I might as well say here and now that this has never sat well with me. The statement that a person who pirated a book "would never, ever buy it" doesn't change the fact that he has it now... that makes it a copy that has not been paid for, and therefore, a lost sale caused by theft.
In much the same way as a man plucks an apple from an orchard, it doesn't matter whether he eats it, throws it away, or gives it to a horse: The fact is, he took it, and that makes it a lost sale through theft. The fact that he says he wouldn't have paid for it is immaterial to the fact that he took it.
By that logic, I dismiss the "It isn't a lost sale" rhetoric as specious. It's just another way to excuse theft.
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You're right, nothing changes the fact that the person who obtains a book by illegally downloading it ends up in possession of the file without paying for it, and is guilty of what you are calling theft.
While that definitely makes it a loss, it doesn't make it a lost sale, just as the theft of a paper book from a bookstore is not necessarily a lost sale. It has the potential of a lost sale, but the actual loss is the wholesale cost, not the retail price.
The problem I have with the term "lost sale" is that I think too many people use it to justify a false conclusion. By using that term they create the impression that if their work was not pirated, their total number of sales would equal the sum of the number of legal downloads and the number of illegal downloads.
I am not aware of any evidence that justifies that conclusion.
I am sure that piracy leads to lost sales and lost revenue. However, I am also sure that the total loss of revenue due to piracy is NOT equal to the number of illegal downloads multiplied by the retail price. That's the problem with using the term "lost sales," it gives the impression that the speaker believes that to be true, and thus makes their entire argument suspect in the eyes of anyone who does not agree with those numbers.
I can certainly agree that each illegal download represents the potential of a lost sale and that the rightsholders should receive full retail price for each illegal download. But that's not the same as saying that had the work not been pirated it would have had that number of sales - and that's how many people interpret the term lost sale: not as the potential of a lost sale, but as an actual loss of revenue from people who would otherwise have bought the work had they not downloaded it illegally.