Most students cry about being poor, then turn around spend $$ on iPhones, beer and Aber-whatever_is_popular_at_the_time-Fitch.

They need to learn to do what everyone else does. You save for what you need and live within your means.

Students that don't learn this in college have a good chance of growing up to be adults who also try to game the system and live beyond their means.

BTW, in college I bought PKzip (I'm probably one of like 3 people who've ever bought an unzip program). I also pay every piece of software I get from Microsoft and Adobe (painful). Why? Because all of these tools are useful. If we don't buy it who's going to make it? Seriously, like who's the software angel fairy that magically funds software companies? Just because a lot of what we see on the internet is free because of ads, that doesn't mean that the software we use on our laptops is free.

We can choose to contribute to the society as a whole or we can be a leech convincing ourselves we deserve things for free and that the man is out to get us.

I don't know the OP, but usually someone who asks that type of question is looking for someone to give him a decent enough argument to not feel bad about doing what he knows he shouldn't be doing. The people that know its wrong don't bother to ask.

My $0.02