There may not be "shades of gray" as far as the legality and fact of copyright infringement goes. But morally, it's certainly not so clear cut. A 14-yr-old me pirated Photoshop and used it to screw around with some filters (I've got little artistic talent) and whatnot. There's certainly no harm done to Adobe in that case - I wasn't gonna buy Photoshop for a total few hours of playing around. Someone living in a poor country that simply could not afford the software is in a similar position. It doesn't harm Adobe, but locks them in further - just like Microsoft benefited greatly from piracy, too.

It's still illegal, but there is clearly different levels of morality. If a large, profitable, studio was pirating software, that's sorta sleazy. People that legitimately can't afford it, eh.