I don't I buy that argument without data to back it up. I'd hypothesize that the amount of piracy a title gets is directly proportional to its popularity.

Sure with an indie title you have fans that are more sympathetic to the producer, but with mass market titles you have the entire mass-market demographic. Do you really think that the number of people in the mass-market who are too lazy, dumb, or otherwise choose not to pirate out-weigh the ratio that sympathize with indie producers?

Show us some statistics please if you're going to make this argument.

>"I'd hypothesize that the amount of piracy a title gets is directly proportional to its popularity."

I'd hypothesize that its popularity is directly related to its production values and budget, with a few exceptions. That is, the more popular media is the kind of creation that needs to be incentivized, because its expensive.

I've seen people who aren't even particularly tech savvy pirate Hollywood movies and major label music. It seems to me that pirates are killing the very content makers whose products they most enjoy.

I don't have any statistics or evidence beyond the unanimity of my personal experience and observation. Could you give me statistics that show people pirate low-budget content more than the reverse?

Art school film projects are created to satisfy a class requirements -- few people want the linked list implementation some freshman CS student wrote. That being said, piracy is often asserted as occurring by those who intend to financially exploit their output, a film school student who achieved a wider audience would most likely be ecstatic if their work was "pirated" and achieved wide exposure. However, there's little demand for film school student work because it's not marketed. And there's nothing saying that just because something is marketed (or has a big marketing budget), has wide exposure, there is demand for it means that it's actually good, valuable and worth having been created. Admittedly, that can't even be measured until consumption occurs and people experience it, which may just mean that pre-paying for content creation before having a chance to judge if it's worth it having been created or not (baring reputation of the creator) ends up financing the wrongs things -- we've all been in the situation of having paid $10 to see a movie that's barely worth 50 cents. Not all creative output needs to be blockbusters to be considered high worth.