Piracy affects PSP sales? Pfft! You're crazy!

[Lone_Canis_Lupus]

Sky Render said:
The only time that piracy has an actually negative impact is when a consumer stops being a consumer and becomes parasitic instead. That is to say, they discard the idea of paying for goods and services entirely, even for things that they would have been willing to pay for before they made the decision. In this case, the negative impact is upon all goods and services that they previously would have paid for and will not now.

These are "true" pirates, and they're actually very rare. There is a rather cynical belief amongst many people that pretty much everybody is more than happy to go that route, and abandon all morals and ethics in favor of being a detriment to society. But the reality is that most people are not willing to abandon their morals and ethics, ingrained as they are from early childhood onwards. The cases where people do throw them away are usually due to their brain chemistry going out of whack, not due to them just saying "screw this" and turning their backs on the rest of humanity.

 This is software though, not something physical. I don't know about everybody, but it seems something like that would be a lot easier to throw morals and ethics away for rather than shoplifting or something like that. I wonder if the "true" pirates you talk about go out and shoplift all the time?