> Am I an exception?

Yes, I think you're an exception, sorry.

We will never have real data on this. But simply on its face, I find it extremely hard to believe that most consumers have a strong enough moral compass to go out of their way to buy something they already have access to. Maybe they will for a tiny handful of special books that they want hard copies of, or authors they really like, but not for most media they consume.

This type of system also becomes a popularity contest for creators; you are supporting the people you like as opposed to whose work you want to read. If an author says something you disagree with, it's easy to just read their work without paying them. I'm not against consumer boycotts, but it should generally come with a sacrifice on both sides--for consumers, that means missing out on the product or service.

You are free to feel however you want about this. I can certainly see the immense societal value of making things accessible to more people. But I flat out don't believe the "piracy doesn't lead to lost sales" shtick, of course it does.

https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-...

From above:

'The Dutch firm Ecory was commissioned to research the impact of piracy for several months, eventually submitting a 304-page report to the EU in May 2015. The report concluded that: “In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements. That does not necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect.”

The report found that illegal downloads and streams can actually boost legal sales of games, according to the report. The only negative link the report found was with major blockbuster films: “The results show a displacement rate of 40 percent which means that for every ten recent top films watched illegally, four fewer films are consumed legally.”'

> I find it extremely hard to believe that most consumers have a strong enough moral compass to go out of their way to buy something they already have access to.

This is zero-sum thinking. Do you oppose libraries on the same principle?

Sometimes making a thing accessible can increase the overall market for the good, because it trains the behavior. The market for books requires readers, and readers are created by people reading.

I would not buy a book after downloading it from Anna's archive. But that's the wrong question in my opinion. You should be asking why aren't most books available in a DRM free format?

The main reason to download "pirated" books is that they get rid of all annoying barriers that exist in "legitimate" copies. It's a better product.

You feel. You think. Google up the studies of piracy and you’ll see that the biggest pirates are also the biggest buyers. Replace your private opinion with some science.

The reframing that will help you understand this is that these people are fans (I stole this framing from Korey Doctorow who releases his books online for free and encourages his fans to buy a copy if they like it). Fandom is a positive sum game. The more you do it, the deeper you go with it the more you’re happy to pay the people who create the content you love.

The easier it is for you to find new content the easier it is for you to become a fan of a new thing.

For example: I want to buy a copy of prince Pukler’s hints on landscape architecture. I can’t find a physical copy anywhere and I’m not sure if it’s worth $120 for a reprint or $500 for an older version. I could pirate it (I use that word loosely since this work is obviously in the public domain) and check it out, but I haven’t bothered so I haven’t bought a copy. This is a case of me NOT pirating and therefore NOT engaging with new content.

Your other points aside...

> I'm not against consumer boycotts, but it should generally come with a sacrifice on both sides--for consumers, that means missing out on the product or service.

I'm curious as to why you feel this way, genuinely. The decision to boycott means that there is no sale, full stop, so no money is being handed over. Why does anything after that matter? The important part, the money, is already decided from the start.

It's nothing to do with morals or conscience, pure self interest incites me to to take action and buy physical copies or official ebooks or collector's editions or CDs or lossless digital releases of works I first consume pirated. I want creators I like to make more stuff. I feel good looking at my bookshelf filled with things I enjoy. I don't like throwing out or donating tons of books every year because they're no good and I couldn't tell until I bought and read them.

Books seem somewhat unique to me in that the physical product is better or at least different from the digital one, so it kind of makes sense to buy it even if you already have a digital copy. This is unlike e.g. streaming services where the paid service is strictly worse than the pirated one (e.g. no offline, doesn't work at all with some monitors/setups, only low bitrates allowed).

Back when you couldn't buy most idSoftware games here I had to go out of my way to let an online buddy of mine with a non-German Steam account buy and gift the collection to me. So it does happen. And I even got quite some duplicates as I had managed to buy some, just not all of them.

> you are supporting the people you like as opposed to whose work you want to read

TBH personally I find that a much more convoluted reason. It might be an edge case of "I will watch this clip of horrible person to get the original source" but actively seeking out material for free just so that they get nothing, but I can consume it in whole? That sounds really rare to me.

In several countries customers are forced to pay a special tax on empty media (storage) with the intention of proceedings to be redistributed among the copyright owners.

Some of these countries are codified under the Roman law principle, ie whatever is not explicitly forbidden by law, is simply not forbidden (as opposed to common law).

In some countries downloading the published media (eg a film after the official release) is permitted.

And those who download, paid for it in the form of tax.

Directive 2001/29/EC for the EU only (Article 5).

Other countries rely in provisions of WCT, 1996 (Art 10) and WPPT, 1996 (Art 16)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy has several countries listed, with examples/extent of these laws

I hope you support downloading books/films/TV shows/music by the customers who paid for this privilege.

You are probably right, I am not representative of the vast majority of people who consume products, whereas I collect [what I consider to be, for me] GREAT stuff.

But one of the point I also wanted to highlight is that I knew nothing about those stuff and would have had no opportunity to taste them and be convinced that they are GREAT stuff [for me].

And to come back to your comment regarding creators. The thing that I hate are creators [for example writers who are interviewed in radios] who sell their book with a marvelous speech, but the content is eventually very so/so. As a consumer I feel robbed.

> I find it extremely hard to believe that most consumers have a strong enough moral compass to go out of their way to buy something they already have access to

I like the idea that consumers only buy stuff out of moral obligation.

Like if you went to your ethical friend’s house and saw that he had empty book cases and no art on his walls because he hasn’t yet been imbued with the requisite moral fervor necessary to buy anything. It’s hard for him to be sure what he’s obligated to buy or that he’s obligated to buy anything since it would be wrong of him to know what’s inside any book without buying it first.

And then you went to your no-good, dirty, downright despicable friend’s house and it’s full of books and art because for every 20 books he pirates he buys one, and because he’s just so darn unethical he pirates a lot of books

> But I flat out don't believe the "piracy doesn't lead to lost sales" shtick, of course it does.

I'm not as certain as you are. Correlation does not imply causation, but media sales have trended upwards in the age of piracy which leads to some interesting hypotheses.

A few years ago Shirley Manson (lead singer of the 90s band Garbage) accused YouTube of making its fortune off the backs of content creators - basically charging the entire enterprise as being one big exercise in copyright infringement. And yet the music industry, as well as Hollywood, seem to be doing better and better each year in terms of dollars made. Some of the distribution models have changed - broadcast and cable television are pretty dead in the water, but the entertainment industries in general seem to be doing better than ever. And yeah lots of individual artists are still getting raw deals from Spotify and labels etc. as they always have. But industry-wise, in terms of dollar amounts, it seems there's more money to be made than ever before from creating and selling entertainment.

The statement you made that I absolutely agree with is that it's hard to get real world data on this. An individual who is able to get free access to something may be unlikely to ever pay for that same thing.But the answer to the question: "Does piracy hurt the industry's bottom line, or help it on the whole?" is a very difficult question to answer. And we have to consider the even harder stuff to measure. Things like: is a teenager who pirates recorded media more or less likely to buy merch and concert tickets? More or less likely to buy a special edition package with tangible collector items?

At the end of the day, I have no clue.

I also offer all of this being very pro-capitalism and pro-intellectual-property. I don't condone piracy. But if we're just looking at raw data and trying to form our hypothesis, we have to start with the fact that the raw data points to upwards trends on the whole.