Pirates on Film

The film industry is at it again, making lovers of media feel crap about themselves. Something in the article really stood out to me though:

 The general economic impact of piracy on the film and TV industry was, he said, “nothing short of staggering”.

That justification doesn’t make much sense to me. How is it possible to put a definite number the amount of people NOT paying for something? How do you prove a negative? There are so many variables involved.

One example: a person might happily never watch Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides if they had to pay (particularly given it’s frosty reception) but will watch it if they pirate it. In this case, the studios would never have received money anyway but at least by having pirated it the film is more widely consumed. However there is no definite way to pinpoint who would or wouldn’t have watched it otherwise.

I guess the issue with this argument, though, is that studios don’t care about artistic integrity or viewer appreciation except in the form of financial reward.