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It's a little more complicated than this. Sometimes media (or games) are easier or a combination of easier & cheaper to pirate/workaround drm than obtain legally. E.g. Netflix notoriously has location restrictions on where their licensing applies, and people use vpns to work around these. They literally can't pay Netflix more money to e.g. watch the US catalog from Australia. Or see also how much game of thrones was pirated, especially before hbo had a standalone streaming service. For a while you could get it only as a cable add on, so some cord cutters turned to piracy.

When content is available easily and at a reasonable cost, it's often a better experience to buy than pirate. Sure, there are some people who will still pirate everything but there's a lot in the middle who are willing to pay something.



People who are "willing to pay something" typically have an entertainment budget and are willing to spend that money on high-priority beneficiaries (e.g. struggling publishers and starving indie artists that they'd like to see more work from, works so great that they inspire gratitude, live entertainment that cannot be pirated, gifts for someone else).

Choices of entertainment to pay for diverge from choices of entertainment to consume, and piracy accommodates the difference.




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