I think the whole argument is WAY over-rated. When i was a kid, it was popular to have a street sign in your bedroom. All the parents overlooked it, it was just part of being a KID. No one got in trouble for it, although you got a lecture from your parents about right and wrong, the usual stuff kids ignore but later makes sense. The only kids that got prosecuted for it were otherwise malcontents who were breaking windows, stealing from cars/houses, and in general making truant nuisances of themselves in every way possible. When the police had had enough of them, on one of their (many...lol) constablulatory visits to the house and the kids room, if they KNEW the kid was doing all kinds oif illegal things, and they werent catching them at it, they would throw the book at them for the obligatory street signs in the bedroom.
Now, we all know SOME people who are way too smug and superior with themselves, and just LOVE to look down their nose at others. "Hm. I never would stoop to stealing anything. I am WAY better than that." Fundamentally, this is a problem with the persons personality way worse then the person who will tell a little white lie to spare someones feelings (thats LYING, and its WRONG) or will download some warez or free mp3's to try them out or whatever.
There were always kids who were way too religious, or superior-feeling (got it from one or both parents...its genetic...lmao) to function in life in a way evem remotely resembling normal. Some of these kids took to coming over to "visit" kids, then calling the police on them. Once we got the hang of simple formal logic and arranged tests (hmmm...Frankie never visited my house before , and the next day i get a visit from the police...hmmm...john noticed the same thing...hmmmm) allowed us to DO something about it. Ill bet those ninny tattletales never knew why some of the older kids just all of a sudden didnt like them, and started to pick on them, and why they suddenly had no COOL friends...lol. When i was in the service, there was always the possibility of a blanket party, and if you do this in a bar or repeat what you saw at a party to the wrong person, you can get your ass beat.
So when you go to a studio to record, you reccomend grilling the tech and demanding to see proof of ownership of each and every plug in he owns and may or may not use on your tracks? Way to fire asshole, thats a great way to have the guy on your side making you sound as good as he can. Even if he doesnt have anything he didnt register, i bet he sure feels like youre a ninny.
If you got the money to throw around, buy the stuff and brag. If you dont have the money, either save up and have very little, or get every piece of warez in the world and put up with the nightmare of instability and the registry spiderweb that constant installation/reinstallation leads to. If you dont know WHAT you want or need, download a little of everything in warez, decide what you need, then buy it with an informed decision.
but for gods sake, some people i think play with themselves reading the bible and the ten commandments.
The TRUTH:
when youre woman asks you if "this dress makes my ass look fat", lie. Trust me, just lie, and do it convincingly. You MIGHT go to hell for having iled so many time so well, but its easier, trust me.
never, ever tell anyone, man or woman, that the spouse/sig other is cheating on them, nor with who. Even if they ask. One way or the other, SOMEbody is going to kick your ass.
its none of your business what anyone has on their computer.
nobody is being put out of business. Lars Ulrich has so much money, he cant even tell you how much he has. Then he complains youre "taking food out of his kids mouth". What a crock. I've not noticed any high quality multitrack software/hi end plug in companies going out of business lately. They all seem to be putting out newer versions periodically, and I bet if we went and looked at the lifestyle of the Steinberg CEO, he has a yachy bigger than my house, which is crappy but real big.
I agree that 99.9% of all warez users will never make a single track, much less song or album that is "noteworthy" (pun intended). But if there is a kid with alcoholic parents somewhere who gets a lot of stuff, and really learns a lot and grows up to be a real, serious audio engineer, composer, songwriter, or musician, then the world is a better place.
Warez are really just free advertising when you get down to it, a kind of unregulated demo. Read your bible and play with yourself, or better yet, tell youre wife she really does look fat in that dress, then follow that up with telling the really huge, muscular, scary guy at the bar how you know his wife cheats on him with. Keep telling him until he believes you, so both him and the guy shes cheating with smacks some semblance of reality into you.
It has a big brother feel to it, or maybe I'm just being paranoid. 
