many of the people who currently pay for it would stop doing so
I don’t doubt it, but I wonder how many. People do pay for things that they could get for free—either for the convenience of legal acquisition, or because they think the product is worth it. Is there a difference between the set of people who would stop paying for software if copyright were abolished, and people who only buy software now because pirating it is illegal? If so, what? If not, the question becomes, how large is the second set?
I don’t doubt it, but I wonder how many. People do pay for things that they could get for free—either for the convenience of legal acquisition, or because they think the product is worth it. Is there a difference between the set of people who would stop paying for software if copyright were abolished, and people who only buy software now because pirating it is illegal? If so, what? If not, the question becomes, how large is the second set?
I don’t think the data that exists is very good, but some attempt has been made to collect info on pirating of games: Google led me to this ars technica article about this call for emails, whose author gave this interview and wrote this followup. And he wrote this essay on copyright which may be relevant.
He also posted a link to an essay about pirating in World of Goo which linked to an essay about pirating Ricochet Infinity.