Lots of people here sell software through subscription, or get revenue from ads. Others are satisfied with profits from various mobile app stores. Although there is piracy there, there are enough buyers because prices are cheap.
So the definite culprits of piracy are not "thieves" but bad pricing and inconvenient installation. The absence of "thieves" would not translate into more sales.
Subscriptions are great and we offer one as one of our products. Obviously we have no piracy problems there. But our software is arguably more sensibly delivered as desktop software due to it's cpu and file size considerations.
So while we started with an online offering, users demanded a desktop version and we delivered.
It is easy to assume that because your business is not a victim that those business that have suffered are just not as good at delivery, but I think you are wrong and I would argue that even businesses that make bad decisions deserve to have their IP protected by government action.
Maybe they do deserve protection, but that's not how the real world works. Right and wrong are decided by groups of people, not moral absolutes.
Here more people seem to care about freeing knowledge than profiting from it. They see large entities like old IBM, current Microsoft as impediments to progress, overcharging for software, making large profits from business customers and not spreading the benefits of that software or making software poorly suited to the less well off. That's a vague description of the sentiment.
Eventually these groups face off in arenas where arguments don't count and someone comes out ahead.
It's impossible to stop piracy technologically, lawyers can only threaten or fight little skirmishes for publicity to discourage the general populace from it. Ultimately struggling businesses need to put up more than arguments. It took music companies a long time to get around to that, could have been much smoother with less lawyers and more service.
So the definite culprits of piracy are not "thieves" but bad pricing and inconvenient installation. The absence of "thieves" would not translate into more sales.