I think you’re overstating how much anyone knows or cares that Libgen is Russian (if that is a correct categorization). Also, as you imply, the hurt to publishers may be overstated - a download is not a lost sale.
It very much is. Not 1:1, but it's absolutely correlated. I've made several purchases for things that I tried to pirate and couldn't find.
An ancedote is not the same as data.
(Legal) libraries had an effect of increasing sales, much to the surprise of everyone when they were first introduced. Its entirely possible that piracy could have too. Or maybe it doesn't. Who knows. I think the effects are non-obvious enough that actual studies are needed to know what the actual affect is.
Not specialized scientific literature, I will never contribute to Springer's bottom line. But many books and films.
Sharing is marketing. Microsoft executed this beautifully under Gates, this is the reason №1 they are so dominant now.
Reviling sharing by relabelling it as pirating while still profiting from it on a different level is a good old strategy.
Sometimes the brand is enough, i.e. I know by experience that if a book is from Manning I can trust it, whereas if it's from Packt it's hit-or-miss-but-probably-miss. Self-published ones? 90% are worthless, 1% are gems with the rest on the verge. You can't really know this from reading a sample chapter or the ToC.
What if you don’t have the money for the purchase? You’d never buy the thing if you couldn’t get it for free.
But at the same time, I think you can definitely say that it’s often like a lost sale.
> Not 1:1, but it's absolutely correlated
>> It very much is. => FALSE (my opinion)
>> Not 1:1, but it's absolutely correlated. => TRUE (my opinion)
> I think you can definitely say that it’s often like a lost sale. => TRUE (my opinion)
Sorry for being a nuisance and getting caught up in semantics. I think we're mostly in agreement, my bad.