The Economist explores the benefits of piracy.
The Economist on Piracy
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point is, the benefit is to the copyright owner in some of these cases, not the person doing the pirating
Yes, the copyright owner in fact can see a benefit through piracy. The statement about Microsoft is not surprising. If taken through the long view, some, but not all, piracy becomes free advertising.
In the case of music, the artist can be exposed to many more potential fans than would normally be the case. Certainly they lose a little potential money, the publisher much more, on that downloaded song. I say potential because there is no guarantee that it would have been bought. However, if the person likes the artist’s work, they are more likely to buy the original album and subsequent work than if they hadn’t been able to sample it (I have done this myself). Here the independent artists, and the not-so-mainstream artists are the winners, artists who don’t have the marketing budget that groups such as Sony EMI have for Kanye, Jayzee, etc.