Well, I suppose it depends on whether you're comfortable with "I can't afford this, therefore it's okay for me to copy it." The rest of my original comment -- a

Well, I suppose it depends on whether you're comfortable with "I can't afford this, therefore it's okay for me to copy it." The rest of my original comment -- about how the kinds of people who pirate Altium and other stratospherically expensive, highly niche software are highly unlikely to actually represent lost sales -- might apply in your case. For me personally, if I was actually going to be using niche software like that to make things I was going to sell, I would not be comfortable doing it with pirated commercial software for both ethical and legal reasons, and I would look for adequate cheaper alternatives, only moving up to Altium when and if my sales justified it. This is why I don't actually own or use any Adobe software anymore -- it's less niche, to be sure, but I wouldn't use Photoshop and InDesign nearly enough to justify the price of Adobe Creative Suite. And, again, personally, I don't feel like "but I'd use them occasionally and I wanna use the big boys' toys" justifies me pirating Adobe's software rather than finding much cheaper alternatives that I still like.