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The fundamental argument for anti-piracy is that at least some of the pirates would have paid for the content if piracy was not available. It's not all the pirates, and it's not none of the pirates. Nobody would care about pirates if they were 100% unmonetizable.

I'm making numbers up, but let's say 10% paid as usual, 1% converted to payment because piracy wasn't available, and 89% didn't want to pay and didn't play. The publisher gets 10% more revenue if piracy wasn't there.

Nobody knows what the actual percentage is.



Your example ignores the potential positive effect of piracy on sales. It's likely that at least some of the pirates purchased the game because they liked it. It's also likely that all the extra people playing it contributed to the publicity.


I've seen the most data from individual authors. Every report/experiment I have seen had the author making more money off books that were available for free.




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