> People who pirate would not pay for that stuff anyway.
How can then Steam, Nerflix, etc. reduce piracy by orders of magnitude? That means that at least 99% of the people getting stuff without paying would instead... pay?
No. People who wouldn't pay otherwise now have easy and relatively cheap access which reduces the friction so much, it doesn't make sense to scour the web for keygens and cracks and what not.
Now, with a gazillion streaming services we'll see piracy ruse again because of friction and cost.
Or, simply, these services brought in the otherwise non-paying crowd.
We already had this discussed and explained many times over. Why are we at it again?
Quote: "In 2013, the European Commission ordered a €360,000 ($430,000) study on how piracy affects sales of music, books, movies and games in the EU. However, it never ended up showing it to the public except for one cherry-picked section. That's possibly because the study concluded that there was no evidence that piracy affects copyrighted sales, and in the case of video games, might actually help them."
Overall the question is complex, and this is a good study: https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/Global-Online-Pirac... which shows that it's not clear-cut, depends on income and availability etc. And that piracy may have both negative impacts (4% fewer visits to cinema) and positive impacts (increased visits to life concerts etc.)
However, quote, "an increase in illegal consumption over time is found to correlate with an increase in legal consumption and vice versa". The reason is: most decisions are done on the spot, and consumers chose the path of least resistance.
How can then Steam, Nerflix, etc. reduce piracy by orders of magnitude? That means that at least 99% of the people getting stuff without paying would instead... pay?