Not trying to make the piracy seem "right" or anything, but I would like to point out that I didn't make any money with the pirated Macromedia software either. I made a couple cartoons that got blammed on Newgrounds, did the examples in the Animator's Survival Kit, and then decided I'm not smart enough to be creative and did software instead.
I worked with Macromedia at the time and they were all for people pirating their software and actually listened to them talk about seeding their betas to pirates.
