This is a good point.

If you cannot pay, then you either pirate or not - you don't buy, because you can't. In either case, the producer loses nothing, because there is nothing to gain.

In the other case where you could pay, but doing so is much more painful than pirating, the producer is the idiot - they made it painful to buy. They are losing sales not because people don't want to pay but because they make buying the product painful.