Originally Posted by War_Hero

Adobe makes a shit tonne of money because of piracy. With the high price comes the belief that Photoshop is miles and miles ahead of GIMP. Because people think it is way better, they all pirate and use it, thus establishing it as the industry standard. Because it is the industry standard, schools, universities, businesses, and normal people all buy copies of it. Same foes for musicians. Many bands actually lose money on selling albums. They make their money off of concerts and other live venues where the record company(satan) is not controlling them. MIA knew that record companies screw you over, so she gave out her songs for free on napster and limewire, and now she is super popular because of it. If she had sold those same songs through a record company, they would take 90% of the profits, charge for for outlandish shit and it wouldn't even reach a wide audience.

The smart succeed in the internet age. Piracy has helped adobe and MIA and countless other achieve a wider audience for which to sell their stuff too eventually. Doom I was super easy to get for free, but ID games still made millions of dollars per person. You are not very educated in marketing or observation, Synthetic_Soul, piracy has made it very obvious that people are more willing to eventually spend more money on something they can get for free.