[sergiotapia]

Meh, it's an industry monopoly they have on a global scale. And a web developer from india cannot afford the huge price that comes with Adobe Photoshop - so they pirate it. Don't care personally, what do you they expect, in the real world? Shades of gray and all that.

Another example: games.

A AAA game costs 60$ on Steam a price 90% of the people online in South America can't afford. So what happened recently? A lot of latinamerican online stores sell Steam games for a much more realistic price. For example, a AAA game costs $30-$40 on sites like Nuuvem.

[akerl_]

No offense, but there really aren't "shades of gray" here. I've definitely pirated things, but not wanting to pay the cost of something doesn't entitle you to spring forth "illegally downloading" as a justified option.

The article's case, where downloading the software legitimately was actually not an option, does establish that other option: he has paid for the software (or the serial, or the dream of software, or whatever), but Adobe has now made it impossible to legitimately access the software. He didn't contact Adobe and say "I've decided I must use your software, but I do not wish to pay, so it's cool if I pirate, right?"

[MichaelGG]

There may not be "shades of gray" as far as the legality and fact of copyright infringement goes. But morally, it's certainly not so clear cut. A 14-yr-old me pirated Photoshop and used it to screw around with some filters (I've got little artistic talent) and whatnot. There's certainly no harm done to Adobe in that case - I wasn't gonna buy Photoshop for a total few hours of playing around. Someone living in a poor country that simply could not afford the software is in a similar position. It doesn't harm Adobe, but locks them in further - just like Microsoft benefited greatly from piracy, too.

It's still illegal, but there is clearly different levels of morality. If a large, profitable, studio was pirating software, that's sorta sleazy. People that legitimately can't afford it, eh.