despite all evidence to the contrary

What evidence? Somehow I doubt all the mega-corporations whose sole purpose is making money and figuring out ways to do it better are all just completely stupid and none of them have ever figured out that piracy doesn’t affect sales. Because it definitely does and the only reason it doesn’t dent sales more is because there’s people who don’t know how to pirate stuff, people who are afraid of doing that, and people who chose not to, and all 3 groups are shrinking. It makes no sense to argue it has 0 effect on sales. How does it make sense to say that if something is also available completely free of charge, it somehow doesn’t affect sales??