In my opinion Piracy is the way forward in technological advances. If it wasn't for the younger generation (14 - 20) pirating all their software and subconciously/conciously increasing their IT skills the technological increase over the years wouldn't be as high. I mean how is a 14 year old going to be able to afford applications what Adobe supply? Most 14 year olds might download an application like Adobe Flash to play around with making little stickmen animations then when they get a couple years older realise what it's actually capable of doing and honing their skills because of it. Then they get employed to a decent IT job for a respected IT company. By that IT company having a really professional site it can grow and invest more money in it's development to create new innovating projects.

I'm not completely one-sided though as I am going to be going into Web-Development & Application Development obviously piracy will be an issue but the fact is companies are going bankrupt because of piracy they just aren't earning what they would be without it..

I think the whole thing is ironic.