I had an interesting childhood - when I was barely 10 years old, they installed internet at home. And to be honest - many of my interests came from the internet. Without the internet I wouldn't know about aikido, programming, and many other things that I know now and that I'm interested in.
Moreover, it's the internet that introduced me to many people. I started communicating with people from far away corners of the world, and then meeting them in person. Literally - I knew people from India, Iceland, Suriname, and many other countries. I had online friends with whom I could discuss abstract topics, common interests and so on.
And finally - the internet helped me with learning languages. The first foreign language for me was English - I learned it from 5th to 11th grade, although honestly, I understood almost nothing from those lessons. But I couldn't say the same about the internet. Because I actively used it to learn the language - I entered forums where they wrote and spoke in English, I opened random sites in English. Now I, for example, opened wikiHow and try to read random topics. Moreover, in internet forums there are many people interested in helping each other and you can just ask - how do you say this or that.
What does piracy have to do with it - I'll say right away that piracy played exactly the same role in my life, and I'll tell why. The thing is that piracy was the only possible way to access quality content - books, movies, music, software. And many things that I learned for myself - I learned because this content was available for free. It was precisely because of piracy that I learned to program, and with these skills I then worked for several years. Precisely because of pirated books I learned many things that helped me in life.
Didn't want to pay?
Simply there was no such possibility. Firstly, if I wanted to, for example, buy some game - it cost 1000 rubles, for comparison my pocket money was 5 rubles a day. To buy a license it would be necessary to save up for 200 days. I simply physically couldn't buy it even if I really wanted to.
And by the way, everything I could buy when I had the opportunity - I bought. Firstly - because it's more convenient than piracy, and secondly - because this way I could support the developer. For example, Adobe - I bought Lightroom subscription when I had such opportunity, although it was possible to download and use the pirated version.
And most importantly - that if I hadn't learned to program or edit photos using pirated software - I probably would never have saved up money for it. Because money earned is also thanks to those skills that I learned from pirated versions.
Piracy and countries
But this probably all applies to countries with low standard of living. In Sweden I probably couldn't survive long having nothing but pirated software and getting a salary on which even a cup of coffee was unaffordable. And in principle, countries with low standard of living contribute less to the economy, but this contribution still exists.
Precisely thanks to piracy young minds get acquainted with quality content earlier, and then when they have the opportunity they can turn to it more. Moreover, I don't think that if a child in Russia downloads GTA - this is somehow connected with whether he'll buy it or not. And it's a fact that piracy allowed many programmers, artists and photographers to learn their craft.
But I understand why software companies and film studios fight piracy - because this is essentially lost profit for the company. Although in the end it all rests on the law of supply and demand - if there's demand for pirated content, then someone will offer it.
On the other hand, I think that the best fight against piracy is making content accessible. Today, for example, I absolutely don't use pirated films - because it's easier to open Netflix and there see literally almost any film I'm interested in. And this approach is much easier than downloading from torrents. There's no better way to fight piracy than making legal use more convenient than pirated.