[dale_glass]

> 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.