At some point you get old enough to not want to bother with piracy because of the hassle if you have a decent first world income.
For example, having to go through every streaming app to work out which one has the show you want, or buying a piece of hardware sold by an American that hasn't even thought about logistics to any country that isn't the USA.
Piracy for convenience happens again.
As a student, I didn't really buy the "piracy increases sales" studies, since I went from buying one thing a year to zero. Clearly, sales were lost.
As an adult, I can casually swipe my credit card and buy similar things on a whim. How much less I bought as a student is a rounding error.
Most people or organizations are either rich enough to not bother with piracy, or poor enough not to buy especially much in the first place.
I'll mention this is doubly true with industrial software. Ain't no way an individual will drop $5k on a CAD program. On the other hand, ain't no way a serious business will pirate a $5k CAD program. Having people know how to use your tools, though, drives sales.
Partially disagree. For things like music and tv series, there's more hassle when acquiring the product via "official" channels. For example, when I want to download a music video, I can just go on youtube and I can download the video with one click (using "unofficial" software). If I wanted to use "official" channels to purchase a copy of the music video, I would have to spend a lot of time just finding out which service sells it, then figure out if they actually sell this piece of music or merely rent it out, then figure out a method to register and pay, etc. In the end I have no idea if I will even acquire a mp4 file or some kind of DRM time bomb.
I can't fathom why anybody would feel like buying music is less of a hassle than downloading music without buying it.
> For things like music and tv series, there's more hassle when acquiring the product via "official" channels.
> I can't fathom why anybody would feel like buying music is less of a hassle than downloading music without buying it.
True. Note that the text you quoted referred to "acquiring the product". Streaming audio from Spotify temporarily is different from "acquiring" the audio file. Do you think acquiring audio files via official channels is somehow less of a hassle than acquiring them via unofficial channels, like youtube-dl?
I tried following my linear algebra course using freely available materials and/or 2nd hand text books, but constant "new" editions and access to online study portals made 2nd hand books impractical.