Are there any positive effects of software piracy?

Eh… not going to get into the general ethics of software piracy, largely because I’m in the GNU camp. (i.e., why pirate software—risking prosecution—when you can get 90–125% of the functionality for free, legally?)

Anyway, wikipedia had a couple good links:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/03/12/microsoft-executive-pirating-software-choose-microsoft
http://apcmag.com/5254/thanks_for_letting_us_pirate

The first link to Arstechnica is more of a “if you’re going to pirate, please pirate our software”—meaning that if someone is stealing your software, they’re more likely to buy it in the future.

The 2nd one is a horribly written article talking about how the Pres. of Romania credits the rise in IT savy in his country with software piracy. Reading it, it may be sort of a “spoof” article. Although, I have heard similar arguments quoted on legit news from Chinese sources.

I will simply say this. I stole Photoshop, got a job using Photoshop, then work bought me Photoshop.

Same as johnpowell here

Guess I’ll have to complicate it a bit, but thanks for the answers :)

Of course that there are! Some companies even like having their software pirated, because that makes it more popular, and the user who used the pirated program, may change his mind and buy original when next version of that program gets published.

The least controversial answer I can think of is what is known as “abandonware,” programs that can’t be bought legally.