Rewards for software piracy

I have never subscribed to the excuse that software piracy is harmful and there appears to have research to support this view.

Further proof of piracy has not hurt Microsoft and indeed has recently rewarded the country that has pirated most of their software with a 2/3 price reduction for the price of Vista.

I guess it is like paying them 2/3 of the price of Vista so that Microsoft can count them as their users (you really can't count pirated users as users can you?) to further increase the Vista population.

So in many ways, it is kind of like advertisement budget and is definitely more effective than putting advertisement on the back of shopping dockets or cereal boxes.

In the mean time those countries, like UK, US and Australia, that perceive piracy bad are penalized with having to pay full price. In some case, other country is forced to pay more.

Who says piracy is bad! It is damn good for the consumers. I am just wondering what kind of messages does does this instance projects?