Here's the deal with piracy. As a private user, I cannot afford the astronomical prices of software for development purposes and learning. Since I am typically using the sw for personal education and learning, I do not have an ROI to help me justify making the purchase. If I want to learn the software, I have for fork the cash and eat the loss. Sure I write it off as a business expense, but I already carry tax deductions over multiple years as it is. Additionally, I can only carry the depreciation, not the actual purchase amount.
I am not condoning theft in any way, shape or form. But the reality is, by my having pirated software for my own home personal educational use, I have been able to learn the products well enough to suggest and sell many other organizations (clients) on the merits of the purchase. Therefore, my pirating has ultimately helped the publisher sell licenses they would probably have never sold because I was proficient and could educate the client to the merits of the product.
Also, many software companies are ignorant to good marketing practices like trialware. In some instances, I have to purchase an expensive application with absolutely no return policy on the word of a sales rep and/or the rhetoric on a website. I cannot test to determine the effectiveness of the application before making the purchase decision. When you are talking about an IT organization like mine, you have 100+ servers and 3000+ clients per customer site. When I make a recommendation to purchase software, I had better be damn sure the stuff is going to work.
That is why I have my OWN network at home and have CDs filled with burned application installs of pirated warez. I can also honestly say that I have NEVER installed a single pirated application anywhere but my own PC at home. If it is for business, then the business can buy the license.
My $.02