Comment by ddingus

Yes, and the struggle with this back in the day was the *IAA and related organizations wanted to equate infringement with theft.

And to be clear, we javelin the word infringement precisely because it is not theft.

In addition to the deprived revenue, piracy also improves on the general relevance the author has or may have in the public sphere. Essentially, one of the side effects of piracy is basically advertising.

Doctorow was one of the early ones to bring this aspect of it up.