The issue of pirate copies will never go away. In an ideal world there would be no murders, break-ins, car jacking, robberies, hacking or bootlegging etc... but we don't live in an ideal world.

Someone mentioned cost... I've seen $10 applications pirated and placed up on the net for download, so its not the fact that a genuine copy cost so much. It seems that the low life that pirate these applictions do it just for fun or kudos.

In the example of reading a book rather than buying it, thats a bad example as you are still causing finacial hardship to both the author, publisher and retailer as its a lost sale. I mean you would hardly go out and buy the book for yourself if you had read your friends copy from cover to cover.