sure but there is money linked to every copy, every time you copy it illegally the author losses money, maybe his prices are too high but you don't need it to live so it's your choice to buy it or ignore it. freesoft for example does not charge you anything but it's their choice not to do so, like asking a friend to fix your kitchen. you can't force someone to do it for free.

@Anonymous: This is proving to be false. Piracy = larger audience = more fans = more people buy your work because they like it not because they have to. Larger audience is always better, the "money" that is supposedly lost is made up for by the entirely free promotion that the piracy generates.

@Anonymous: That only works in certain situations. If your product has an audience of millions of people, and some of those people pirate and give you good word of mouth, it could increase your total sales.

If you were only going to get 1000 people, and some of those people pirate, you may not generate enough word of mouth to make up for the hypothetical sales lost.

@Merdle: or you could turn your potential audience of 1000 people into an audience of millions. Also people tend to be less likely to pirate stuff that is lesser known, usually out of a feeling that the artist is an independent and less insanely wealthy than the big names. I know myself I'll be more likely to give money to a lesser-known artist because I want to help them succeed and get the word out about them.

How is giving something away for free different from piracy? Other than that the artists that give away their work for free upfront are savvy to the fact that it IS going to get shared for free whether they like it or not?

@Anonymous: When you give something away for free, you can plan for the lack of money gained, you can advertise it as something to spread to your friends, and you can try to find other ways to make money off of it before you even release it.

@Merdle: Name one concrete example of a small-time artist losing money because of piracy.

@Anonymous: No.

The smallest I can think of is the guys at Stardock, about 35 employees. Demigod was pirated to oblivion. Even worse, they are the company who made a public statement about not having DRM or trying to attack pirates.

@Anonymous: Me, but i cant prove what i am unaware of?

@Merdle: Maybe they should have had business models that took into account that people would share their games and leverage that exposure to make money off of it on the back end through purchasable upgrades and merchandise? Not everything has to be about front-end sales.

It is difficult to continue to support the cause when you have no forseeable income and zero dollars to your name. Derp.

And then there is the fact that any money you might have made is being stlen due to piracy and any reaching out is impared by email hacking

@Anonymous: The business models that emerge are going to suck pretty hard for music. Noone trusts the cloud, or Facebook, but we still have and use our accounts for convenience. when you stop paying for something you lose a lot of control over it. Honestly these days I'm kinda scared about the internet, it seems to be becoming a smaller and smaller place. I still pirate anyways oh well.

Piracy only loses rightsholders/artists money if:

a) You were going to buy the media anyway, which usually isn't the case, AND
b) The profit margin they would have made exceeds the promotional value you playing the media provides (through word of mouth, etc.)

Calculating that is probably impossible, and I would seriously doubt the credibility of anyone who claimed to be able to crunch it.

i hate math, but am good at probability... and this is one of the few strings that kept this puppet hopeful.

@Ostaf: Yes, but if you were never going to pay money for something that cost money, you don't deserve to have it. That is how these things work. Forget if there was a loss of revenue or not.