I used to sell my software online (well, I still do, but not very actively). A few years ago, while searching out of curiosity, I found that a cracked license k

I used to sell my software online (well, I still do, but not very actively). A few years ago, while searching out of curiosity, I found that a cracked license key for one of my apps had recently started floating around. Eventually I got around to disabling that key, but you know what notable difference I observed in sales before and after the cracked key became available? Zero. Why? Because people either pay for software or they don't. Some people who pay for software also pirate it. I have never encountered such a person who paid for software because they couldn't pirate it; rather, they paid for it because they wanted to support the author. Probably a few people like that do exist though, so out of the thousands of people pirating your software, you might have lost ten sales. Maybe. Generously. All of the others simply would have used something else if the cracked key hadn't been available. When many of us see a comment like yours, we feel much the same way that a mathematician probably feels when someone claims they have a proof that 0.9̅ ≠ 1. It's a broken argument that we've encountered many times before, and the fallacy of the argument is not even interesting to discuss anymore. Moreover, none of us have ever seen someone make that argument and then bring up interesting and novel points to the ensuing discussion. We know exactly how the conversation is going to go, and there's little motivation to run through the motions of it again.