I'm here agreeing with most others - While in the past it may have been different, these days I see almost no need to pirate software, especially as a student. However, my definition of pirate isn't always the same as the company's definition.

Now, expanding on my first point, as a student, what do you need?
You generally need an office suite - OO generally does the trick. Sure, it may not support .docx properly, but in two + years of college, I've never had someone give me a .docx file. Generally - if it wasn't given to me hard-copy - it was a .doc file, and generally a "compatibility mode" one at that, and OO reads and writes them well enough that I never had trouble.
Now, while I like the Linux OS, and would love to get everyone running a Linux-based system, if you need certain specialized programs, Wine just won't cut it.
I'm talking mainly about recent Autodesk products.
If you end up needing windows though - these days - you can get a full W7 home(I think) license for $10-20 through your school! That's so cheap, its not worth the hassle of pirating it, and at that price, you really shouldn't.
Autodesk products are another common requirement, but as a college student, you can get trials/full versions of everything they offer, for free! All you need is a .edu email address, which most if not all colleges will provide for free.
Photoshop's another big issue - I'm not sure if you can get a free version of that, but, well... You can always use GIMP. And if you need some feature you can't use GIMP for, you can always use the school-provided computer lab.

There are a number of other programs that fit these criteria, but I'm not going to go into them all.

On to my second point: The "grey area".
Lets take this example: You own a fully-licenced copy of Windows XP. You go to reinstall, and it goes "Oh, you can't do that. You've activated it one too many times". Now, if you go and get a licence-crack, I see absolutely no problem with this. Microsoft may, but I don't.
Same thing with any software - If you have a licence, but need a "crack" of some sort to get it working, by all means, go ahead.
I also see no problem in downloading a replacement disk image to replace a scratched or broken piece of install media - You bought the license in the first place.

On the other hand, pirating a game(and other software in the same vein) is right out... Unless its something that's not being currently sold, and used copies aren't available(abandonware, for instance). I fully agree with providing the creator his fee, but if something's not being sold, he won't get his fee anyway.

So, while my views may not exactly match up with what IP laws are - especially in certain countries - those are my views, and I stand by them.