The calculation of money lost to piracy is a big farce. I am absolutely sure that over 90% of pirated music/movies/TV/software would not have been bought anyway. They are being pirated because it is easy.
The vast majority of computer games are total garbage, even if they are a huge production. People download them, play for two days and un-install forever. Call it a demo or trial if you like. For a small number of top products, people might have actually bought them instead. If they could not be pirated, people would simply have less games or no games at all - they would not buy them except the odd one. Online games make their money from subscription and do not face this problem.
TV episodes is even a greater farce. Most people don't pay per view - they pay per channel whether they get to watch it or not. If an episode was aired while they could not watch it, then they paid for a product that they did not get. If then they go and download it from the web or tivo it, it makes no difference. The other people who download episodes are those who have no access to that channel. Either because it is un-available in their region or that they are not willing to pay for it. In both cases it is not money that it lost to the industry. You may call the latter case stealing, but the simple truth is that if it was not easy to download that show, they would simply not watch it - it is not very likely that this is what will make them pay for cable company to get the channel.
My case is even stranger. I am currently in a country that dubs all TV shows. The place I'm staying in has TV. It already paid for the episodes, but it is not a great fun for me to watch. If I down load the episodes that were aired this week, but in english instead of the dubbed version. Did I pirate it? I mean, it was already payed for with a different sound track. If I can't download it in english, it means that the show is being payed for, but not being watched - should someone sue for their money back?
