""Will customers buy my product, and if so, at what price?" is an enormously non-trivial question, and the entire discipline of marketing revolves around trying to answer it."
Very true. However, if you have sites on the Internet that are more popular than yours giving the same thing out for free, eventually you won't have to even ask the question. It will be answered for you: $0. Most people take the path of least resistance. If they are given the choice of downloading something for free or buying it for $50, many will always find a reason to justify not paying for it.
If the pirates were actually coming out with something innovative and competing (an example would be creating independent labels to compete with recording industry) the industry would truly have to worry. Instead, content is just copied for free and spread around. The only real defense to is to add more protection. Since the demand is just as strong, the industry doesn't really know if a loss of sales is because they are putting out shit or because of freeloaders.
It actually may prevent good movies, music, and software from coming out and hurt consumers in the long-run. But, most people don't care. They just want free stuff and will go to great lengths to justify it.
"People giving out the same thing as you for free" describes not just piracy, but anyone who is giving away a substitute good. It's the same argument Microsoft can make against OpenOffice or Linux. The same argument the Post Office might have against email.
The fact that many software products do well on the market despite rampant piracy illustrates that there are plenty of customers who are willing to pay, and see the value in buying the product even when pirated copies are available.
So if your product isn't performing as well enough to be viable, and you don't know whether to attribute it to (a) pirates copying it for free, or (b) the possibility that your product isn't very good, what response is more likely to generate positive value? You can (a) fight the pirates, incurring additional expense and/or diminishing the value proposition for your paying customers; or (b) improve the quality of your product in ways that actual customers will appreciate anyway.
If the answer is (a), and the target market for your product is composed mostly of freeloading jerks, you're probably focusing on the wrong market.
Very true. However, if you have sites on the Internet that are more popular than yours giving the same thing out for free, eventually you won't have to even ask the question. It will be answered for you: $0. Most people take the path of least resistance. If they are given the choice of downloading something for free or buying it for $50, many will always find a reason to justify not paying for it.
If the pirates were actually coming out with something innovative and competing (an example would be creating independent labels to compete with recording industry) the industry would truly have to worry. Instead, content is just copied for free and spread around. The only real defense to is to add more protection. Since the demand is just as strong, the industry doesn't really know if a loss of sales is because they are putting out shit or because of freeloaders.
It actually may prevent good movies, music, and software from coming out and hurt consumers in the long-run. But, most people don't care. They just want free stuff and will go to great lengths to justify it.