The way I see it is the dilemma isn't between pirating a single project or not pirating it. The dilemma is whether society encourages people to build ideas upo

The way I see it is the dilemma isn't between pirating a single project or not pirating it. The dilemma is whether society encourages people to build ideas upon ideas and push forward, or to lock up ideas in their own owner's domain, where nobody can build great things upon them. The open and closed worlds are not independent and disconnected. Whenever someone creates a closed, proprietary product and wants to restrict uses of it, he is directly harming the open world too, by drawing away resources from the creation of an eco system and net effects around the open product to the closed product. Also, assuming a person places some value X to openness, if the closed product is created and adds value Y to that particular person, and Y>X, it's effectively encouraging a closed world. I think the single greatest thing we're losing on is derivative works. We live in a world with almost no derivative works, because of closed creations. For that I partially blame the closed content authors and really wish they had created less of it. If you share these beliefs, it's easy to reach the conclusion that piracy is better than purchasing and encouraging these closed works. Of course it is better to avoid using it altogether (to avoid creating net effects around it), but if you are going to use something, it is better to pirate it than to purchase it legally.