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No. True. The exchange deprives the content makers of the revenue due them as owners of the material... whether that material would be purchased if not available for free (as it likely would be in more than a few instances) is irrelevent. What you are suggesting is that it is okay to steal something if you wouldn't but it in the marketplace because -- otherwise -- it would sit on the shelf unsold and, either way, the company doesn't realize a return on the item.

I'm not at all saying it's ok - don't impute. I am saying that there is a segment of people that will not spend money on things that they would view/listen to if they could get it free. In these cases, no money would go to the content authors and you can't lose money that doesn't exist.

Thoughtometer did not state whether the companies were due the money, only that they were deprived of money they would have gotten had the file downloading been impossible.

It was disingenuous for Lotus to have claimed a loss of billions of dollars on Lotus 1-2-3 in the 1980's because pimply teenagers had made copies of it when there was no chance in Hades they could have coughed up the $300 for the product. The real loser in software piracy is not the Microsofts and Adobes of the world, but the would-be low-priced competitors who would never get a chance because so many who would have bought the low-cost product hust pirated the high-priced one.

In any event, all of the numbers of lost revenue is completely made up. There is no good way to know how much money would have been spent on these products if these downloads were impossible.