>There's a third case of "piracy" which is just casual copying, to sample the products. People first download music and torrent movies and sample what they've g

>There's a third case of "piracy" which is just casual copying, to sample the products. People first download music and torrent movies and sample what they've got. If they find a good director or a good band, they buy a collection or a set of albums. I don't really consider these people a problem since they're consumers at heart and they use downloading mostly to find stuff to buy. If they couldn't download, they wouldn't find much music or games or movies, and they would subsequently buy less. I think this is (close to) the case of people who are actually a problem. The first two cases don't represent much lost oppurtunity. In this case, the people pirating might go out and buy the stuff. Because of this, the oppurtunity cost of them already having some of the stuff is far more significant than in the first two cases (where there was minimal oppurtunity lost)