That's certainly not what I'm saying anyway. The facts are that the marginal cost of the software is pretty much zero, and that copyright violation is not physically depriving you of anything though (except income, and how the potential and actual lost sales equate is a hotly debated topic) - that's the very reason that copyright legislation is actually in place. That doesn't mean that there is any moral or legal justification for violating copyright (or any other wishes of the author) in this way.

His time is obviously worth money, and that is easily quantifiable (hence the labour cost is often separated from the parts cost). His skills cannot easily be quantified though, and (similarly to software development), the cost has been invested already, so there's no marginal cost involved. Your example here equates to someone expecting you to write a program for free, rather than someone feeling they have the right to take a copy of a program you've already written. Again though, I'm not trying to claim that either of these are in any way justified.