I never understood the concept of a lost sale. A transaction that hasn't been made cannot be accounted for as lost revenue. In the world of goods that's a loss in inventory, in the world of software there is no inventory, a new copy just magically comes into existence, how do you quantify that as a loss? If anything, we should punish distributors of illegitimate copies, not the people who download them - if it's free and out there, it's free and out there, I'm sorry that your DRM failed, but that's life. You're right, it's not going away, but most people grow out of it. Nowadays I buy all of my games even though I'm still fully capable of pirating them just because I want them on my shelf and I want to support the devs, but not everyone has that kind of disposable income. In fact, I'd argue that many times games become big *because* they get pirated and, as such, distributed to a larger target than would be possible otherwise. Those pirates become customers if your product is good, I'm a prime example.
