The big thing is that pirates would most likely not pay for the thing they are pirating if it was not available legally. This isn't by any means universal but take video games for example.
Developers have long since abandoned the concept of providing demos to "try the game" before you buy it. If I am thinking about buying a game but can't be convinced that I'll get my money's worth, I'll pirate the game. If I end up liking the game, I might as well buy it so that I can use online features, receive updates, and not have to worry with the crack causing weird bugs. In these cases, piracy has filled in the roll of demo software and provides a net positive for companies because any converts to paying customers would likely have never purchased the game had they not pirated it.
Alternatively, look at something like the anime fansub scene. Fansubs often have far better quality than anything you'll see coming from legitimate anime streaming services. I pay for anime streaming subscriptions but I can't count the number of times I've refused to watch something on the service due to how bad the subtitles were, torrented an actually good fansub, and then supported the series (not the streaming platform) through alternative means.
You also have the digital preservation aspect. Piracy is the reason most early console games are playable nowadays. Emulators aren't really legal and all of the published ROMs are very much pirated content but if they didn't exist, how many games would be either extraordinarily rare or lost to time by now. Same goes for music. What.cd was an incredible archive of music and it preserved tonnes of tracks from small now defunct bands throughout the start of the millennium. This is all content that would otherwise be lost to time if pirates hadn't preserved them due to their own motivations.
There's more on this out on the web. I read a really cool article about it a while back but I can't find it atm.
Developers have long since abandoned the concept of providing demos to "try the game" before you buy it. If I am thinking about buying a game but can't be convinced that I'll get my money's worth, I'll pirate the game. If I end up liking the game, I might as well buy it so that I can use online features, receive updates, and not have to worry with the crack causing weird bugs. In these cases, piracy has filled in the roll of demo software and provides a net positive for companies because any converts to paying customers would likely have never purchased the game had they not pirated it.
Alternatively, look at something like the anime fansub scene. Fansubs often have far better quality than anything you'll see coming from legitimate anime streaming services. I pay for anime streaming subscriptions but I can't count the number of times I've refused to watch something on the service due to how bad the subtitles were, torrented an actually good fansub, and then supported the series (not the streaming platform) through alternative means.
You also have the digital preservation aspect. Piracy is the reason most early console games are playable nowadays. Emulators aren't really legal and all of the published ROMs are very much pirated content but if they didn't exist, how many games would be either extraordinarily rare or lost to time by now. Same goes for music. What.cd was an incredible archive of music and it preserved tonnes of tracks from small now defunct bands throughout the start of the millennium. This is all content that would otherwise be lost to time if pirates hadn't preserved them due to their own motivations.
There's more on this out on the web. I read a really cool article about it a while back but I can't find it atm.