Companies that sell software depend on users stealing it. Then they can guilt-trip consumers into buying it. It works. It's kind of like a primitive version of shareware.

Once upon a time, software was rigorously protected. It was also incredibly overpriced. The companies that tried to sell that software did badly. A company such as WordPerfect did well. Its software was not copy protected. The reason it did well was that customers stealing the software had a chance to try it out -- no one in their right mind was going to buy a bunch of software at very stiff prices just to see if it might fill their needs.

WordPerfect found other ways to encourage stealers to buy its product. Frequent updates and many disks gave incentive to buying a legit copy -- stealing was such a hassle!

The current software industry is based on consumers as they are, not on ethical robots who do the right thing. It knows that they will steal software -- the question is, how to slowly steer them into the right path? The answer is to pretend piracy is a horrible thing yet continue to make piracy possible. The companies that do this prosper.

What I am saying is a condensed version of what goes on, and is inevitably inaccurate in some ways. But it is the general picture of what goes on. So a student shouldn't go into ethical fits because his friends are stealing software. It's part of the system and how it works.