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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnRTroy" data-source="post: 4750068" data-attributes="member: 2732">I've noticed a lot of "piracy apologists" tend to refute actual figures of piracy.  For instance, the claims that "you can't prove they would have bought the (item)", yet this flies in the face of decades of economic research into the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasticity_%28economics%29" target="_blank">Elasticity</a> of supply and demand, which basically talk about how goods and services and measuring what people will pay--maximizing profit based on its utility.If you make a product free, more people will partake it in.  Whether they would have bought it if it wasn't free misses the point that it's the right of the producer to set the price and figure out what price--and to naturally suffer consequences of that.  It's quite logical that more people will partake of a free product than the cost product.  Now, in a free market if that happens (somebody giving something away gratis), that's fair, and competition is what drives down prices--Abobe Photoshop is high priced because of the specialized research, decades of training, and lack of decent competition in the high-end market.  But piracy is illegal just like insider trading--there are certain things you shouldn't do.  Since piracy's so rampant because of the relative anonymity of the Internet, violations haven't been enforced well.I rarely see very well reasoned arguments against these basic economic principles, rather appeals that "the world is changing, your a dinosaur", or "you should be happy for the free publicity".  These emotional appeals don't look at the whole picture.I don't think the companies reporting on these stats are lying.  It's not in their interest to lie.  If piracy wasn't a huge issue affecting the marketplace, they wouldn't bother talking about it.</blockquote>

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