Well, my answer to your question may not be a popular one. I buy my games and applications. To keep this within the scope of your poll, my reasons are fairly simple.

1. I get all original manuals, technical support, and low-cost upgrades.
2. For games, I get to play online (Such as Diablo2 and RTCW).
3. Game "rips" are not good in quality at all (cinemetographic scenes are gone, etc.).
4. There is no need to find "add-on's," "cracks," or "keygens."

and if you would buy an original copy of it if the prices would be decreased.
It is not necessarily true prices will decrease if everybody bought everything legitamately. The point of buying programs is to pay for programmers, the board of directors, distributors, OEM's, PR's, manufacturer and everybody else down the line. What does this mean? It means profits, tax revenue, jobs, and better products.

I am not going to bash those that cannot afford applications or games. Everybody has rough times. Some main arguments of pirates and the justifications of piracy are:

1. I cannot afford it.
2. It does not go to the programmers and those who really deserve it. It only pads the pockets of the CEO's (The make Bill Gates richer argument)
3. Everybody else is doing it.
4. Applications and games are too overpriced (goes along with 1).
5. I like the challenge of cracking protection.
6. I like to collect them. (You will be surprised how many people I know who have many programs who either used them only once or not at all)

Here are some links that may further interest you in this "war" that has been going on for many, many years:

http://www.gamespy.com/legacy/articles/piracy.shtm - Is a great article on the subject of piracy and what it is in a frank and clear form.

http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/ - Shows the scene in a pirate's eyes.

and the DOJ has interesting cases invlolving not only piracy, but other forms of intellectual property cases as well:

http://www.cybercrime.gov/

I wish you the best of luck in this project.

albn