Ex-Cyber, you do make good points. The way I look at it sometimes is if you weren't going to buy it anyway, there is no money lost to the industry if you pirate it. But I'm sure there are quite a few people out there that WOULD pay for it if they couldn't get it illegally. What those numbers are, we'll never know. AFAIK most first time offenders get a small fine and/or are strongly encouraged to pay for cable.
It reminds me of something my neighbor went through. When he was using a cracked version some software to generate eBay auctions, he was caught by the author. The author told him he could either pay twice the registration fee to register it, or face the consequences. He paid the fee. Without having any proof, I bet a lot of people would cave to the cable company when faced with "subscribe or face the consequences." Which, as mentioned before, seems to be one of their tactics.
I can't say I'm an expert on the whole issue, but you're right, we can't really trust these companies and their numbers. I never have. Certainly cable theft and/or piracy doesn't hurt the industry as much as they claim it does.
To sum it up (and I hope I'm making SOME sense so far) it's simple economics. For all the time you're NOT working, that's costing you. Let's say you have a job that pays $10 an hour. You stand around at home for 2 hours instead of going to work. You've just lost $20 plus whatever out of pocket expenses you might have during those two hours (ie: price of admission to movie). Same deal with the cable company. One hundred people decide to not pay $30 a month for cable and steal it instead. That's $3000 in lost revenue for the cable company per month.
Basically, we'll never know the figures, they can only estimate using flawed methods of polling and such. But there IS loss to piracy. Just no out of pocket expenses.
I'll do my best to reread that and make sure it makes sense. But if something doesn't make sense I'm sure you get the picture. And I'm not trying to start a war or anything, but have a sensable argument. I really don't give a hoot if anyone steals cable or not