I'm curious what the actual sales value lost is. If it were 100% impossible to pirate Photoshop, people would just use iPhoto or their scanner's OEM software or the crappy image editor that comes with Windows. Would Adobe then claim they "lost" money because Apple ships iPhoto with its machines? Of course not. So how much money was truly lost to people who would otherwise purchase software if it were impossible to pirate, vs. how much money was "lost" to people who weren't going to buy the software anyway?

My local Honda dealer "lost" THOUSANDS of dollars last year because I decided to put off buying a new car until 2005... but that doesn't mean I went out and stole a Civic off the lot.

Not only that, but I wonder how many companies increase the price of their products to offset losses by piracy. So it becomes a never ending cycle: we lost $10 million to piracy so we're increasing prices by $100 each. next year, oh my gosh, we lost $11 million to piracy! But in fact it's because of increased prices. How is it possible to truly account for all those variables when claiming losses to piracy.

The value of any product is what you can get for it. The real value of pirated software, then, is close to $0.00, because that's its resale value (even on eBay).

The value of the lost sales? That's still a fraction of the full price.

My job provides a Windows laptop, and bought me a copy of Photoshop for Windows. I wanted to use Photoshop on the Mac, but I couldn't afford to buy it for OS X, and I didn't really NEED it... there was always The Gimp. Eventually I found a remaindered copy of Photoshop Elements 2.0 for $30 at Purplus. It does everything I actually needed Photoshop for. So, that's what it was worth to me.

Now, does this mean Adobe lost a couple of hundred bucks because I didn't buy their OS X version of Photoshop?