bitflipper
Greg's business is a perfect example of how to cope with software theft by ignoring it and concentrating on providing value. 177 folks are currently signed up for the group buy, every one of whom had the option of stealing his products and chose not do so.
It also occurred to me that Audio Damage's problems may partially be the result of their market focus. Many of their products are more likely to appeal to young people, which is to say people who a) have little money and b) have grown up with an everything's-free-on-the-net attitude. Think about who's lusting after a great flute or bass library versus MangleVerb, bitcrushers and beat slicers.
I agree greatly with bitflipper and GregJazz. Pirates existed before the company in question started its business, it will be there if they go out of business. Gregjazz started his business in this environment too and it's done very well. In the early to mid-2000s I led digital marketing for a Fortune 500 that consulted to companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Motorola and others on piracy and counterfeiting and developed a friendship with our head of that business and largely developed my philosophy in this area from that experience. Anti-piracy efforts are important. I would never advocate it should be ignored. However, piracy of Microsoft software and other major devs is commonplace. Consequently, any business in the software world must take piracy into consideration. It's not new and it's not about to go away. I always try to persuade independent software developers to dedicate no more than 5% of their resources towards anti-piracy efforts.
With regards to market share being "stolen away" by software piracy, it's extremely difficult to make those projections for non-OS, non-essential software. In a lot of cases, I think small software developers will rationalize their business is being destroyed by piracy when the truth is, they are suffering from poor strategy, poor planning, poor targeting, poor product selection, poor pricing processes, a lack of good market and marketing research, poor marketing processes and a host of business issues that would harm their business even if piracy did not exist. There is also a reasonable argument that the piracy market can not steal market share away that never existed in the first place, which I somewhat subscribe to. The theory is that a good deal of those using pirated, non-essential (as described earlier, non OS, etc.) software would not otherwise be in the legitimate market anyhow.
I'd also offer that over more than a decade, I've worked with more than two dozen sample and VST developers and found that whenever a truly talented developer implemented time tested product development, pricing and marketing processes it had very good results. Take Greg and Orange Tree Samples. I became a user in their first year. I let Greg know that I was a marketing professional and happy to help if he could use me. We ended up working together in the product ideation, pricing, product naming and promotion. I've watched that business grow more each year. And during that time, their libraries have become more popular among software pirates. But Greg has wisely stayed focused on making great products, not shifting to software that attempts to reduce piracy at the expense of the user experience (and disturbingly forces users to pay for anti-piracy measures directly that actually hamper the user experience).
Kirk Hunter Studios, had their largest sale in their organization's history last year and every single product they sell has been pirated and easily available to those who use pirated software. So, my knowledge of piracy and Fortune 500 anti-piracy efforts and small, independent developers has made clear to me that if you make excellent products that fit a market need, if you price them right, if you are customer oriented and if you know how to promote those products and run a business, there are still a very good opportunities available in the DAW/VST/sample world in spite of piracy.