There are many different motives for piracy. Some are morally justifiable (at least to me), some are not. For example:<p>* Lack of available funds. This is a mostly harmless (and sometimes beneficial) form of piracy. If a person has $75 and a product costs $200, then their two options are non-purchase and piracy. In this case, piracy cannot financially hurt the owner, as the person could not have bought the product in the first place.<p>Adobe have used this kind of piracy to their considerable advantage. High school and college kids pirate Photoshop and become proficient. They go on to become professionals, already locked into Photoshop.<p>* Unwillingness (but not inability) to purchase. This is a harmful type of piracy. A person has the available funds, but pirates something through pure unwillingness to pay for it. This is seen mostly in music and app store piracy.<p>This is a difficult kind of piracy to deal with. How do you compete with something that is free? One notable success is Spotify, which has displaced a proportion of piracy by merely being more convenient.<p>* Non-availability. This is particularly prevalent in the piracy of TV shows. Frequently a program is shown exclusively in the US, and is not available in other countries for months or years, sometimes never at all.<p>This is potentially financially harmful to rights owner, but as those pirating the shows only have the options of non-purchase and piracy, it is justifiable.<p>* Superiority of the pirated product. For example, music at a higher bitrate than can be easily purchased, a pirated TV show that can be watched at any time in full 1080p, a pirated game that does not include restrictive DRM. This type of piracy is financially harmful.<p>Morally this is a bit of a gray area. Perhaps the moral solution is to purchase the inferior product and pirate the superior one. This is however still illegal. The general solution is for the rights owners to "compete" with pirates, to provide equal products.