[BeeDee10]

One moderating factor to keep in mind is that not every warezed copy of SEIV is a "lost sale" for Shrapnel/Malfador; the vast majority of the people who download these things still wouldn't buy a legitimate copy if they _couldn't_ get it for free. There's an idiot I know who keeps pestering me to give him a copy of the full game since I recommended it to him. I keep on refusing, but he hasn't gone out and bought a legitimate copy as a result. He hasn't even bothered to expend the effort to find a warezed copy elsewhere.

I'm not condoning the practice, of course, but one shouldn't panic when one reads things like "10,000 copies of Program X that normally cost $50 each were pirated, therefore Company Y 'lost' $500,000." The actual reduction of potential income is probably much less.