My opinion is that piracy is statistically insignificant as far as profits go.
As it is, theft if is an already accounted for cost in all retail goods. Everything from a pack of gum to mp3 players is marked at a price that accounts for retail shrink (loss occuring due to theft or negligence), and these are circumstances where the proper owner finds themselves without their property.
In the case of piracy no physical goods are taken, meaning that even if it did represent a lost sale it's not a loss of the product. In turn that means the kid who walks off with a pack of gum does more damage to the store than if, somehow, he could have downloaded it instead. This means it takes far more piracy to be equivalent to actual theft, and on top of that the existence of piracy has very likely led to a reduction of actual theft. This, of course, means the one has the potential to offset the other, and as such it's difficult to say that piracy losses are significant even if we assume that it represents a lost sale.
And that's the biggest leap - we have to assume that they would have bought the game if they couldn't pirate AND that they didn't pirate after they discovered the game was worth buying. This is something that is virtually impossible to verify. Generally speaking, people want to pay for the goods they consume - this is a fact backed up by psychological research. As such, it has to be assumed that at least some portion (and perhaps a very significant portion) of pirates do so for lack of funds. If a person simply can't afford to buy something they won't, and those people cannot in good conscious be counted as lost sales.
Overall, there's no significant data that conclusively proves any business is impacted by piracy whatsoever. Perhaps there's an abundance of anecdotal "evidence" and there are certainly many claims being made by businessmen (a class of people that will tell you they aren't cutting prices one day so they can turn around and "surprise" you with a cut 24 hours later, might I mention), but there's just no hard evidence of the impact at all.
You do not have the right to never be offended.
