Oh, that's a different point. First, I'm not sure you can stop piracy. 2dboy tried releasing games with DRM and without DRM and saw the same rate of piracy with each. Then even if you could stop piracy, it would barely make a difference to revenue. They calculated that they could make 1 sale out of every 1,000 pirates. http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ And that's for a really good indie game like World of Goo. One thing I don't see anyone mentioning here is whether "Gentlemen!" is any good.

Not at all, people associate quality with price -- especially when it comes to food.

He can advertise on being a reputable and established source of high-quality food, while you cannot do such a thing without lying.

Of course. But at the same time, your free hot dogs are going to attract a ton of people that wouldn't have otherwise come.

If you hand out free hot dogs, you might go through five thousand in a day. If you weren't there, the guy selling hot dogs might sell five hundred. He certainly might sell less when you're around than when you're not, but you absolutely cannot point to the 5,000 people who took your free dogs and assume that they are all lost sales. The quantity of people who took your free dogs is completely irrelevant. All that matters is the delta between the seller's sales with and without you, which is unrelated to the number of people who take the free option.