I am still a bit conflicted about this. There's no doubt illegal is illegal and that's it.
I do believe a lot of people will "steal" things off the web but then will buy it later. They do this as a way of demoing something. Case in point is my long time assistant in my office. George started working for me as a somewhat immature but smart 19 year old and he's now a very smart young man of 28 and is getting married soon (man, how time flies!). Like every young person I know he's a computer and internet wizard. It's like a rite of passage. Anything I want to know concerning gaming the system or figuring out my new phone he knows all about. Surprisingly he's also very straight, doesn't drink, no drugs, he's a pretty solid citizen. He uses various ways to download mostly illegal movies and music but he's told me several times he also has an extensive DVD and music collection. There's so many movies that look good but really are not he wants to download them first to see if he wants to buy the DVD. DVD's have a lot of extras besides the movie itself and he likes that.
There's also plenty of people who are just curious but not really interested enough to buy software so they download it just to see what it is and then never use it again. Those really are not potential customers so it's no loss to the company.
Does all of this add up to a net positive to the studios and other companies like PG or is it a net loss? I sure don't know and nobody else can figure that out either. It looks like PG is thinking it's a net positive, that's why they don't use any kind of authorization protocol.

Bob

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