> Back then I downloaded a lot of stuff that I never got around to playing / reading / watching.

One could argue that piracy in the above instance causes no economic loss to the producer. If you had to pay for it, you would not have purchased it anyway, therefore the producer is in the same situation in either case.

At the same time companies can hugely benefit from this kind of piracy. In the case of Microsoft, pirated versions of Windows allow them to maintain their dominant position in the market. If the Windows was really piracy proof then the people who could not afford to pay $100(ish) for it would probably switch to an alternative like Linux. That in turn would weaken MS's position since a strong userbase of an alternative OS would develop thus undermining their 'platform' strategy.