If you're a regular reader, you'll know that I feel uncomfortable about a neat and simple distinction between piracy and theft. I don't think it should be assumed that copyright law is always correct in its understanding of theft.
Here's some advice on the topic on AFES' webSalt.
There's some good advice here, but it draws the link to tightly and also only recommend cheap ways of buying Microsoft software, rather than recommending open source stuff.
Some advice on piracy
