"Shoplifting is victimless crime. Like punching someone in the dark."
i've admitted to my own piracy in the past. i don't do it that often but when i do i'd say a good 80% of it ends up turning into a legitimate purchase. often i will go on to purchase an authors entire bibliography (in print if applicable) so 1 pilfered book went on to become me giving the author far more money. certainly more money than it normally would have considering that chances are i probably didn't know the author existed until i saw them on a pirate site.
oddly i feel more guilty about buying a used book than i do about pirating it. maybe its because i have a material good that nobody got money from rather than a copied file of 1s and 0s on my hard drive.