But even though you can't own an abstraction, there should be some sense of morality involved.
If you put in the work to make a big program and it took you alot of effort to program and fix bugs etc. would you like it if people just took it for free? I know you're atheist and since you don't believe in a god there is no reason for you to be moral.
It is definently not perfectly fine. It discourages the software authors to continue making programs. I understand you don't want to dish out 500$ but don't think it's perfectly fine....
I don't think you understand the big picture of software piracy. This is a pretty common argument that I'm sure other people have phrased better, but whatever, here goes.
I pirated photoshop 7 when I was 12 years old. The program probably cost more money than I had ever seen, but I didn't feel bad about "stealing" it. Even then I understood that I wasn't costing the company any money. It's not like I'd ever buy it anyway.
I continued using the program, and newer versions, for the next 6 years of my life, effectively creating a dependency on the program. Now I HAD to have the program. Without it, I was pretty much unable to create graphics. Being a web designer, this is a bad thing for me, since photoshop is expensive as hell.
This is where adobe makes the money. I now have a real job at a web design/search optimization company. They have the money to buy photoshop. They bought four copies of photoshop, illustrator, dreamweaver, and flash once I started working with them, since I said that it was the program suite I was familiar with. Had I not pirated all of these programs years ago, I would have no interest in ever using them commercially.
I have made adobe several thousand dollars because of my piracy.
Tell me again why I should feel bad?