Piracy most certainly steals income, it's just not 100%. If 10% of people who pirated a song would have purchased it for $1, then each pirate is effectively stealing 10 cents. Just because it's not 1:1 doesn't mean it isn't a loss of revenue.
Because in Canada here we allow downloading music as part of fair use like listening to the radio. The artist gains exposure from music downloads which could increase your sales.
So what if this 'stealing' was causes 10% of the users to not buy the music, but 20% of the user to buy the music they would have been otherwise unaware of.
You pay 'royalties' on anything that can record music in Canada, which is about a BAJILLION times worse than what the RIAA is doing here. In Canada, the fee on mp3 players (or audio cassette tapes) affects everyone, even if I didn't want 'free' access to music in the first place.
It's also illegal in Canada to upload or share music if you don't have the rights to do so , so at least theoretically you're downloading that music because the artist/label wants you to.
