I Wear Pants;781255 wrote:1: It does not drive up the cost for you. This isn't a cookie or a case of beer someone stole where the company has forever lost those materials and the ability to sell them. They have no lost cost because of this and as such if they use it as a reason to raise prices they are lying to you.
OK, assume it costs me $1,000 to make a movie and I want to make $1,000 in total profit. I decide to price my DVD's at $10/each and thus must sell 200 of them to achieve my goal. However, some people would rather enjoy my movie for free by downloading it without paying, and at least some of those people are the ones I counted in being in that group of 200. Thus, I revise my projections and decide that because only 100 people will now legally buy my movie, I'm going to have to charge $20 per DVD.
Whether you call it 'lost cost' or 'lost profit', it's the same thing, and it clearly drives up the cost for the people that buy the DVD legally.