Randi128 at aol.com wrote: > ddb writes: 'counting every pirated copy as a full-price retail sale > in stating the losses from piracy is absurd.' > > You are correct, not everyone who pirates a copy would have bought a > retail copy had the pirated copy not been available. But---- how else > do you determine the losses? If I sold 50 copies and 200 people > pirated copies, I would like to think that those people who pirated > were just too cheap to pay for their copies. So---the market is > there. If pirating is killing your business, maybe your charging too > much. A CD or book is only worth what people are willing to pay for > it. Maybe it would be better to decrease retail price to capture > those pirates money? Teenagers who can afford to have a system that > can burn Cds and download Mp3's-----can't afford to buy music??? > Don't value the music enough to pay for it is more like it. > A CD burner a *good* one only costs about $40-50.00 if you shop in the right places and the media is near a nickel a disk, how much cheaper could it possibly get? for the price of about 20 CD's they can get set up with a machine and a months worth of broadband and pump out 1,000 CD's worth of music. Don't forget most teenagers would pay $80.00 for a good seat at one of their bands shows. Teenagers are capable of loyalty and show it in strange ways. One thing that is Crystal Clear is that they have *NO* loyalty to the record industry.