Quote Originally Posted by Matt 26z View Post

I don't think stolen content site surfers should be grouped into this. If they aren't one of the three above, then they can certainly be sold on something regardless of what is available to them for free.
This is very true.

I actually read a study where a claim was made that torrent sites cost XYZ industry so many million a year.

The whole study was flawed as it took into account the value of the good sdownloaded for a certain amount of torrent sites. Nowhere did it mention that maybe 90% of the people that surf torrent sites will never buy anything in their life related to XYZ industry.

I think we as webmasters look at figures from the Movie Industry claiming that billions are being lost and then we think we are losing sooo much money. It's total BS if you look at those numbers. How many surfers that download Movies are members of netflix and never buy a movie anyways? You can't compare losing $25 on a dvd sale to losing what a studio loses on a netflix rental.

While no concrete studies have been done, I would say torrent sites expose surfers to porn that they have not seen before and they may buy.