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Granted, piracy is a big issue, but you have to also allow for the people that pirate things just to say that they have them and never intend to use them. A lot of people download things just because they are there and because they might be popular.
I work network security and had to do some research for blocking p2p sites for a client and I found at a particular site that Playboy was downloaded ~11k times. That is a lot but when compared to the most downloaded item it is very low, the most downloaded item was at ~250k and that was a movie.
For actual books the most downloaded was Harry Potter at ~4k. That's using a sample site so I know it won't represent the thousands of sites out there.
I love reading, if the book is worth it I will pay, specially if it's a new author, that is the only way to encourage new talent. All the big authors are growing stale, read the first and last chapter, fill in the middle with "their" formula and that's it.
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