@Roy: I'm flattered, but don't get mistaken; I really don't have much more to contribute. I gave my opinion, and...yeah.
Despite that, however:
Well, this is where the argument comes in. Many people who pirate software are people who want the software and would most likely buy it if there wasn't a free alternative. This potential sale is lost, and with the number of pirates, this number becomes significant. I would argue that this does have a direct impact on the company that produced the program. Sure, some people would not buy the software anyway, but for those who really wanted it, they would most certainly have paid for it.
It seems to me that we differ in opinions on what people would or would not do when given the same set of options. You believe that there are people who would go out and buy it if they could; I believe that, given the choice, people will always go for the "free" option. This also ties in with whether or not it's practical to compare a world with piracy to one without, which is really just speculation (to me).
Since there's no way to conclusively prove which one of us is right, may I suggest we agree to disagree on this point?
And in recent news, the original creator of the sandwich cannot sell more sandwiches because someone else is giving away free copies of the sandwich. He's broke. Once everyone gets tired of the exact same sandwich, sure, he can make a new one and make one sale before he loses business entirely again. Keep in mind that creating these particular sandwiches takes a very long time and costs a lot of money.
So... How does this not hurt the company?
Do correct me if I'm misinterpreting this, but it seems to goes back to the question of "would people buy it or not given the choice?". For the purposes of this analogy, I agree with you in that the scenario you outlined would indeed hurt the company; however, in reality, piracy comes with limitations. An example is that many pirated games have limited or no multiplayer options due to requirements of, say, a unique CD-Key
(cough blizzard cough), which vastly lowers the impact of said piracy. There's other possible restrictions too, such as lack of program updates, possible instability/incompatibility, etc, etc. Because of this, I would argue that the impact of piracy for many kinds of software is negligible, since the companies have an advantage over the pirates.
Going back to the sandwich analogy(which is starting to get rather complex), what if the original seller of the sandwich has a special advantage that no copy has? Such as, a unique taste that nobody else can identify the source of and thus cannot reproduce. In this case, the original seller is not nearly as heavily impacted by the copies made, and he retains an advantage that allows him to still sell his sandwiches. Yes, some people will still take the copies of the sandwiches over the originals, but it's arguable that this would help the seller, not harm it, by giving its customers a taste of what's to be offered by "the real thing".
But I suppose that is pushing it a little bit too far for reality, since in reality, it doesn't work that way.
You did bring up a good point though, that piracy causes a seller to lose at least some of its hold on a market, and thus lose money. I look forward to your response.
None.