> It very much is. Not 1:1, but it's absolutely correlated. I've made several purchases for things that I tried to pirate and couldn't find.

An ancedote is not the same as data.

(Legal) libraries had an effect of increasing sales, much to the surprise of everyone when they were first introduced. Its entirely possible that piracy could have too. Or maybe it doesn't. Who knows. I think the effects are non-obvious enough that actual studies are needed to know what the actual affect is.

Hm... Once in a while, I buy things that I previously downloaded.

Not specialized scientific literature, I will never contribute to Springer's bottom line. But many books and films.

Sharing is marketing. Microsoft executed this beautifully under Gates, this is the reason №1 they are so dominant now.

Reviling sharing by relabelling it as pirating while still profiting from it on a different level is a good old strategy.

I, on the other hand, have never purchased anything I was going to pirate if I couldn't find it. So for me it definitely is not correlated. If I couldn't find it I just moved on. I tend to pirate nice to haves.

Everybody's different. For me, an inverse correlation happens: libgen etc. act as a bookshop where I can freely browse and evaluate stuff before I buy. So I want to make sure I'm not cheated.

Sometimes the brand is enough, i.e. I know by experience that if a book is from Manning I can trust it, whereas if it's from Packt it's hit-or-miss-but-probably-miss. Self-published ones? 90% are worthless, 1% are gems with the rest on the verge. You can't really know this from reading a sample chapter or the ToC.

> I've made several purchases for things that I tried to pirate and couldn't find.

What if you don’t have the money for the purchase? You’d never buy the thing if you couldn’t get it for free.

But at the same time, I think you can definitely say that it’s often like a lost sale.

Not sure how you missed this from my previous comment, but here it is again

> Not 1:1, but it's absolutely correlated

>>> a download is not a lost sale

>> It very much is. => FALSE (my opinion)

>> Not 1:1, but it's absolutely correlated. => TRUE (my opinion)

> I think you can definitely say that it’s often like a lost sale. => TRUE (my opinion)

Sorry for being a nuisance and getting caught up in semantics. I think we're mostly in agreement, my bad.

Yeah no if the thing I want is 100 dollars and takes 2 weeks to ship I'll pass.