[jacquesm]

For that to be true in individual cases you'd have to come up with some pretty hard evidence that a sale would indeed have been consummated.

In the case of the pirate bay the quantity is so large that some aggregate effect can be postulated without stretching credulity, and I think that is the major reason why this judgment sticks even if there is not a single item of hard proof of any lost sale directly caused by the pirate bay.