Well, it's a known fact that I'm about as anti-software piracy as you can get.
You want to hear some justifications that have been stated to me before though... some that have made me even think they were somewhat valid?
Take 3ds max for instance. Heavily pirated, discreet knows that, for sure. However, it's one of the more successful 3D packages out there. Most students can easily afford the 700.00 USD student version easily, but non-students and hobbyists usually go the "alternate route"... and as they become familiar with the product, they become almost dependent on that software for future projects.
It lands them a job, I've known a few "pirates" that got rather good in 3D at their own pace, and ended up teaching at a local university part-time, or landed jobs doing 3D for larger companies.
Mind you, it's more rare than most, but this is not a situation where a company does piracy - that's where piracy is actually the worst. The individual pirate is a possible one or two license sale. Where a company could be multiple licenses... my point is that the big companies, say discreet, adobe, and alias normally don't go after the small-fry pirates mainly because the moment they get a respectable job, they usually buy the software, but a company that pirates does so in a much larger scale.
and this means a bigger loss of profits for possible sales - a company should be able to afford the software it uses for its daily operations.
The good part of the above is that the end user pirate will basically become dependent on the software and use it primarily in the future. Microsoft pretty much got as widespread as it is today via heavy piracy. Now people can't fathom using anything other than Windows.
That's a possible argument, one I've seen firsthand.
But honestly? I stick by the whole piracy is theft argument. There are a lot of avenues to get software, even at discounted rates, if need be.
