I thought English teachers hated dangling participles ?
Anyway, as I see it piracy breaks down to the following circumstance:
First off, there is sampling. In the real world this is called window shopping. I see no 'wrong' in downloading a few songs from a CD to listen to them before deciding to buy or not to buy. It is just like reading the cover before buying a book. I 'sampled' Firefly, for instance, and this lead to me spending a couple hundred dollars on Joss Whedon's stuff. I hope he actually got some of that money.
B, out of print or otherwise unavailable stuff. If, after searching for a legal copy, I can't find it, I will download a pirated copy. This is a morally grey area, but I personally think it's okay.
4th, there may be (theoretically, of course) certain companies that I intentionally steal from because they have pissed me off or somehow let me down. This is wrong but I do it anyway
I agree that artists of all sorts deserve to get credit for their work. Most artists are drastically underpaid. Then again there are also a few who are paid way too much. But anyway, in short, my opinion is that it is wrong to pirate INSTEAD of buying stuff. But other uses are okay, depending on the circumstances.