They use that number to put political pressure on the DoJ, FBI, and DHS to enforce their IP ownership claims. I get that 100% of their claimed loss would never be 100% of a potential revenue, but AFAIK there is no standard alternative way to calculate those "losses". From what I know, all companies use the same method when describing losses/damages due to hack/cyberattack.
This isn't the problem at all. The problem is that they're calling them "losses", when they aren't losses at all. "Lose" is a plain English word with a very specific meaning: it means you no longer have something that you used to have. These companies never, ever "lost" anything at all due to "piracy". You can't use the word to describe "something you don't have, and never had at all, but which you should have"; it doesn't work that way.
If they used a different term, such as "unrealized revenue", then we probably wouldn't be having this discussion.
No it doesn't. It means you lost out on potential revenues because someone decided not to pay for it. That's a loss. If people are consuming your content and not paying you for it, you're losing something in the transaction.
This is ridiculous. There's a subreddit choosingbeggars that's FILLED with people asking for free art for "publicity". It's insulting to content creators to hear this silly shtick.