I recall what Neil Gaiman said about piracy.
Think of your favorite book. The fist time you read it, did you own it? Or were you borrowing it from a friend?
...
Most of the times, the library was my middle man for that
Anyho... Torrents, warez & the likes are only shunned by the big businesses - and then purposely gave it the derigatory name of piracy.
Real piracy is about raiding a warehouse, shop or shipment of physical copies and then selling it. (And then burrying your loot, drawing a sketchy map how to find it and loosing that map).
Torrents etc. are more akin to a library with an unlimited photocopying machine. Most people download the product, try it out and then either ditch it or support it. And support can come in more ways than just buying the product. Do you know how much an advertising campaign costs? Well, people who are happy with a product are sure to put in a good word - and the advise of a person you know outweighs the empty words of a shiny commercial.
And let me put that library analogy even further. There's a ton of games out there that are just magnificent, but because the original company got busted, are not available on the market - also known as abandonware. If it wouldn't be for the likes of torrents, those things would've died an unkown death... but they won't, because the internet remembers. Same goes for series etc... Heck, even Triumph Studio's "Age of Wonders" was at a certain moment abandonware (though I don't remember the exact reason) but now they're back in business.
I personally used it most for being able to play games that I had purchased at a certain moment in time, but my physical copy got either stolen or it deteriorated (funny how cd's don't seem to last longer than 5 years). Honestly, I don't see the need to repurchase something, unless I'm a real hardcore fan of something & I just can't bother to wait out the download time. Divine Divinity, Temple of Elemental Evil & Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magica Obscura are typical examples for me where I have at least 2 boxes and 1 digital version
Anyhow, the "Borrow & Copy" tactic in the gamerscene is as old as the streets, and for me stands on the same level as when we used to copy an album on cassette. You didn't see the industry making a big fuss about that either...
