Anecdotes from people are interesting all the time. There is this one person who was using a pirated copy of Microsoft Windows XP. One time, this person tried getting the security updates. Then something happened: this person had a message on the computer that the copy of Microsoft Windows XP is pirated and if the person wanted to keep on using it with security updates and stuff like that, a legal copy must be purchased. Now the thing is that everytime the computer is booted up, it shows that message. The person told me this: the moral lesson for those using pirated software is to not update!
Then again, how could one keep on using software that hasn’t been updated? There are security updates and sometimes they are critical ones. If you can’t get them for your system, you never know what you are exposing your computer to. Think of the MySpace news some time ago. Internet Explorer had a vulnerability. If you are a user who did not update, you would have probably been a victim.
Now we see from this anecdote that it is important to have legal software. We do not just have something we could use without guilt but we also get whatever updates the developers have in store. It would be bad for productivity to keep on dealing with malware and viruses because of the lack of updates.
If you are someone who can not afford legal copies of software because they are expensive, you could always download free and open source software. That way you have legal software and you could secure your system because you would have legal access to the security updates and all that.