> no cost is imposed on the producer of the software, because somebody torrenting an installer doesn't cost the company any money.
Lost profit is still lost money. If you run a bar and I falsely tell everyone that your beer is poisoned (and everyone believes me) I'm not costing you any money, but you're still bankrupt at the end of the year.
> When pirating stuff a kid might grab an university book on biology out of curiosity to see how it compares to their high school lessons, but pretty much nobody actually buys books for reasons like that.
You sure that's the only plausible case? Here's another scenario: you need a programming book for your career, but you don't like spending $30 for it and you just pirate it. You would probably have bought it if you couldn't pirate it, but obviously pirating it costs less at nearly no risk; why should you spend $30?
I think this scenario is much more plausible than poor 10-year old kids downloading biology books for fun. But even if it wasn't, piracy enables both scenarios without distinction. Even if it was 80-20, that 20% of not-bought books would have ben bought if piracy didn't exist.
> The alternative reality is that it either doesn't happen or they check it out at a library instead, and again the publisher doesn't get any money.
I'm pretty sure public libraries pay for the books they have, directly or indirectly (with taxpayers' money)
> Lost profit is still lost money. If you run a bar and I falsely tell everyone that your beer is poisoned (and everyone believes me) I'm not costing you any money, but you're still bankrupt at the end of the year.
Yes, but you can't lose a profit you could never have had.
> I think this scenario is much more plausible than poor 10-year old kids downloading biology books for fun. But even if it wasn't, piracy enables both scenarios without distinction. Even if it was 80-20, that 20% of not-bought books would have ben bought if piracy didn't exist.
I'm not arguing that piracy is completely harmless. I'm arguing that it works differently from theft. We can't consider every potential loss as a real one.
Eg, mass torrenting of stuff can get to the point where on paper, if all of that was legally paid for, it'd cost more than the country's entire GDP. That's obviously ridiculous.
Lost profit is still lost money. If you run a bar and I falsely tell everyone that your beer is poisoned (and everyone believes me) I'm not costing you any money, but you're still bankrupt at the end of the year.
> When pirating stuff a kid might grab an university book on biology out of curiosity to see how it compares to their high school lessons, but pretty much nobody actually buys books for reasons like that.
You sure that's the only plausible case? Here's another scenario: you need a programming book for your career, but you don't like spending $30 for it and you just pirate it. You would probably have bought it if you couldn't pirate it, but obviously pirating it costs less at nearly no risk; why should you spend $30?
I think this scenario is much more plausible than poor 10-year old kids downloading biology books for fun. But even if it wasn't, piracy enables both scenarios without distinction. Even if it was 80-20, that 20% of not-bought books would have ben bought if piracy didn't exist.
> The alternative reality is that it either doesn't happen or they check it out at a library instead, and again the publisher doesn't get any money.
I'm pretty sure public libraries pay for the books they have, directly or indirectly (with taxpayers' money)