i'm not sitting here defending anything. the other 10% doesn't factor into any valuation judgment or right/wrong analysis, since i didn't make one. i'm just pointing out facts and pointing out that the concept of digital piracy does not directly equate to the legal definition of theft. maybe they're in the same order or family, but they're not the same genus or species.
I think you guys are going down the wrong path here.
It doesn't matter (to the status of piracy) whether or not piracy is harmful or any other consequences. If 90% of shoplifters get hit with a sudden case of Dostoevsky & slip envelopes under doors resulting in 120% ... It would still be theft. Just like assault is still assault if they sober up & buy you an icecream.
I'm not saying piracy is theft. It is different enough to warrant its own word (& its own treatment). 'Preventing revenue' is not a reasonable explanation. Standing outside a store and yelling like a madman scaring away customers is also preventing (stealing?) revenue.
In some cases, I think that piracy is helpful to companies (photoshop might be an example) in others it's harmful. But that's besides the point. You can invoke that in a wider discussion of how laws should be made or you may be making a moral assertion that rights & such aren't important, only consequences. But that's not really our system (or most people's understanding).
Anyway this discussion is 90% semantics. It's only important to propaganda campaigns (saying stealing is more effective then saying violating copyright).
90% of the time, there is no lost income because there was never any potential to begin with.
You seem to be making an argument about how rates of piracy are distributed across different products. How does this make the effects of piracy any less harmful?
they may or may not lose up to 10% of potential income
I want to remind readers that this 10% (or <=10%, as you just phrased it) is a made-up figure.
what if i made the assertion that, in addition, 10% of people who pirated something will also legally purchase the item they pirated?
If you backed up that assertion with hard evidence, and demonstrated that this effect outweighs the loss companies sustain from piracy, I'd take you more seriously.
Are you claiming that these companies overall make more money because of piracy? Software and media companies are diverting hundreds of millions of dollars of their budgets into anti-piracy measures. If piracy didn't drain their profits by at least the aforementioned hundreds of millions of dollars, why on earth would they throw away so much money into something that reduces their bottom line (and annoys me and other consumers, therefore making us less likely to buy their products)? These companies might be capitalistic, greedy and [insert adjective here], but they're not dumb. Follow the money.
i think the claim i'm making is that piracy is a wash. some people who otherwise would purchase something now won't, and some people who otherwise wouldn't have now will.
When assessing the P2P downloading population, there was a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases. The study estimates that one additional P2P download per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.
When viewed in the aggreggate (ie. the entire Canadian population), there is no direct relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchases in Canada. According to the study authors, the analysis of the entire Canadian population does not uncover either a positive or negative relationship between the number of files downloaded from P2P networks and CDs purchased. That is, we find no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative for Canada as a whole.
and i'm also, apparently, making up statistics.