In addition to gaining experience through the use of pirated software, I think there is also a lot to be said for knowledge and experience gained through the pr

In addition to gaining experience through the use of pirated software, I think there is also a lot to be said for knowledge and experience gained through the process of committing piracy and attempting to do so undetected. As a matter of course, pirates often find themselves becoming quite knowledgeable about topics (audio and video encoding, protocols (FTP, NNTP, BitTorrent, etc.), tools such as BNCs and VPNs, encryption, storage methods, etc.), all of which have valid uses aside from committing piracy, that they would otherwise have little motivation to explore. The desire to commit piracy undetected acts as a motivation for people to gain a deeper understanding of the systems they are interfacing with, and this is often a good thing.