Quote:
Originally Posted by random50
I was thinking about point 1 yesterday, although more from the point of view of claiming that one should not equate piracy rates with lost sales. Whilst I agree the relationship is nowhere near one to one, it seems to me that even if somebody would genuinely never have bought that *particular* product, in the vast majortiy of cases, they would still have spent money on *some* form of entertainment if illegally freeloading were not an available option.
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1: I would never have bought it anyway so it's not a lost sale.
That describes nine out of ten "samples" I download on my iPhone from Amazon. So I can readily accept that a lot of downloading from pirate locations is nothing more than sampling.
And in no respect is this activity a substitute for other entertainment. In fact, a large part of the enjoyment I get from books consists of sampling the books. Were it not for Amazon, I'd just wander down to the local Borders and sample the book there.