The answer to the main question is easy, I come down on the "piracy is bad" side. It is stealing, people are taking something that they did not pay for - whether they read it or not, intend to pay for it later or not, or are doing it to teach someone a lesson, it is still wrong.
With all that being said however, there is no way to measure, unfortunately, how much piracy impacts sales. The only way to answer this would be poll a sizable percentage of pirates and find out why they got the pirated version and what they intend to do with it. For every answer you get that is "I took it because it was there" that is not a lost sale, however every
Quote:
Originally Posted by delphidb96
...if it cannot be found after six months, I download it from the dark-net sites.
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, or similar answer, is a lost sale.
I'm not sure what the answer is, or even if there is one, until then though you have every right to continue to protect your sales by issuing take down notices.