One fallacy, I think, of anti piracy arguments is that a lot of them seem to assume that if I'm unable to pirate something I'm going to pay for it instead rather than going "oh! that's a terrible shame" and then quickly forgetting about it
"If you were not pirating [media] you'd be paying for it and therefore piracy is evil 😡" actually if I were not pirating that media I would be thinking about something else. I have made the decision to not spend any money on this and even god himself could not shake it
the research on this was already done decades ago and then quickly squashed because the record labels did not like the finding that people who pirated music were spending way more money on actually buying music legally than people who did not pirate music. it turns out people who care enough to pirate media are generally big fans of that media and willing to spend money on it if they have the money to spend
According to research, those who download 'free' music are also the industry's largest audience for digital sales
article is from 2009 so we have known this for a LONG time.
The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age of 15. Researchers found that those who downloaded "free" music – whether from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay for music. This would make music pirates the industry's largest audience for digital sales. Wisely, the study did not rely on music pirates' honesty. Researchers asked music buyers to prove that they had proof of purchase.
