I don't think this argument really holds.<p>Saying that you couldn't afford an item and therefore wouldn't have spent any money on that doesn't really mean you'd never spend <i>any</i> money on that given a free pirated option wasn't available.<p>The point being we do have the money, and we do can afford it. It's just that, when you can pirate it, you end up spending your money on other things instead. But its not like you'll never have enough money that you'll ever be able to buy one game.<p>It's interesting to observe the Playstation 3's market, because they've so far done what was unthinkable since way back the times of the PS1: a console you can't pirate.<p>So I have a loooot of friends that live on Brazil, and that pirated all their PS2 games. And that pirate music and movies too. Some even have an Xbox360 and pirate games on it too. But all of them buy PS3 games. They don't just leave their console there hanging, playing demos, as you'd expect.