> But, and maybe I'm mis-remembering, how many people were actually active netizens at this point in history, able to find the ISO?
Does it matter? You only need a few people to download and burn the CDs, and sell them in stalls or out of a backpack. From what I remember from that era, physical distribution of warez through burned CDs was very common.
This was also the case for PC games and those made healthy profits in that era too. So blaming piracy seems to be more pushing a certain idea than the actual cause of Dreamcast issues. Especially since the hardware itself sold poorly - if piracy would be to blame, you'd see a lot of unit sales and low game sales. Which did not happen.
Does it matter? You only need a few people to download and burn the CDs, and sell them in stalls or out of a backpack. From what I remember from that era, physical distribution of warez through burned CDs was very common.