> This is obviously anecdotal, but it's always seemed to me that piracy is almost free advertising in some cases (though obviously not universally.) Tim O'Reil

> This is obviously anecdotal, but it's always seemed to me that piracy is almost free advertising in some cases (though obviously not universally.) Tim O'Reilly wrote a post in 2002 titled "Piracy is Progressive Taxation"[0]. Basically, the conclusion he came to after analyzing the data is that on average, piracy stimulates demand enough for net gain in sales for publishers, but it isn't distributed evenly: works in the fat head (eg. bestsellers, blockbusters, etc.) see a very small net loss (ie. for the most popular content piracy may displace sales a bit), but for everyone else it is a net gain, and the gain is bigger the less popular the content is. [0] https://www.oreilly.com/content/piracy-is-progressive-taxation-and-other-thoughts-on-the-evolution-of-online-distribution/ https://www.oreilly.com/content/piracy-is-progressive-taxati...