"The big issue is this - when someone makes a casual copy of software for a friend, in how many cases would the friend have gone out and bought it had he not had a "free" copy?"

It is demonstrably true that the answer is "some". Despite the propaganda, piracy does hurt the sales of intellectual property products. It does it with software, movies and music. While occasionally someone is moved to buy a product because a free version works well it almost never actually happens... and never in the numbers needed to offset the amount of lost sales the piracy caused.

What I find interesting how much much this issue really seems to only be a factor with people who are home users. In running 3DS Max with Brazil R/S I have two products in that chain that are tied directly to this particular workstation - and that is a accepted reality in the high end markets. BECAUSE IT WORKS. Salve of Brazil and Max are higher because of the protection. Sales of WindowsXP are dramatically higher than one would have expected if it wasn't protected.

I'll even say the unthinkable... I think the sales of Poser5 are higher than they would have been. I have no doubt that a substantial portion of this community was running on... shall we say borrowed... copies of Poser 4 until Poser 5 showed up.

Protection is a product to be sure, but like most products it only survives as a product when there is a demonstrable economic benefit... and there is. Good anti-piracy increases sales. Granted, bad anti-piracy hurts you but thanks to the 'net it is MUCH easier to do it "right" (Max, Brazil, XP, Poser et al.) than it used to be. No more grinding floppies or custom formatted CD-ROM's.

There is, of course, another factor; giving someone else a copy of a program is inherently bad. It's not sharing, it's theft. If your going to do it, fine but let's not get all high and mighty about it. It isn't RELEVANT whether you think it is going to hurt anyone really, you didn't write it, and it isn't your call to decide how to distribute it. Look at how many artists here feel if someone copies their IMAGES to someplace else - it's not like they lost a "sale", the image wasn't FOR sale. But they are still (rightly) upset because it is stealing.