Pirate CDs

This is the utmost tosh:

British Phonographic Industry research suggests that piracy in the UK deprived the industry of 16.5m unit sales in 2005 - approximately £165m in retail value, or 10pc of all CD album sales.

16.5 million units might be worth that at retail prices but that doesn't mean that piracy costs the companies that sum of money. Pirate CDs are cheaper than retail prices. So demand for them is higher. The actual losses are only those people who would have bought at retail anyway, but bought the pirate copies instead.

As in this universe demand curves slope downwards all we really know about such losses is that they are smaller than £165 million, quite possibly a great deal smaller.