I personally have no interest in going on a witch hunt for people who use pirated vocals. It's not my job to police this behavior; that's literally the job of the police.
Having said that, I don't feel that piracy is something that should be condoned or encouraged.
The thing is, the argument that piracy doesn't result in lost sales has a number of issues. For one, it's basically saying that piracy is ok because it's not affecting people who would actually be willing to pay for the product. Expressed in other words, it's saying that it's wrong to steal unless you're not willing to pay the price for what you want to buy. And not being willing to pay isn't a valid reason that excuses theft. For another thing, with the "no lost sales" mentality in play, what would be anyone's incentive to actually pay for a synth? If you can acceptably get something for free rather than pay for it, only the most altruistic people would be willing to pay the asking price in order to support the synths' creators out of the beneficence of their hearts.
Similarly, this argument that pirating is somehow sticking it to the companies that make the products is incorrect, too. Stealing from these companies isn't going to make them lower their prices; they can't compete with "free" anyway. What they're going to do is put in place lots of inconvenient anti-piracy measures that are a pain in the butt for every honest person who buys the software. Or it will cause these companies to stop making synth products that they can't sell to break even/make a profit. So stealing actually does nothing more than hurt the common people that the supposed Robin Hoods are trying to fight for.
Related to the above point is the idea that scale somehow excuses piracy--the idea that stealing from Yamaha is ok, but stealing from a little startup company is wrong. It doesn't matter. Take a look at it from another example--if you murder 100 people, most everyone will likely agree it's awful, and I suppose it is actually worse than if you murder just 1 person. But still, you've committed murder.
It's really not all that complicated. Piracy is stealing. Stealing is wrong. It's wrong for how it undermines the commerce that is one of the fundamental principles of how money-based societies, in a very nuts and bolts way, function. Furthermore, as anyone who has experienced the emotional and economic fallout of having been stolen from can tell you, stealing is wrong for how it hurts the people who have been stolen from. To be opposed to stealing is not being elitist; it's being ethical and compassionate to one's fellow human beings by treating them fairly, even when you have the means and incentive to do otherwise.
I'm not saying there aren't some circumstances that justify stealing. Hungry people with no money might well justify the theft of a loaf of bread in order to avoid imminent starvation, if there are no other options available. But vocal synths are not bread for starving people.
I think I'm more or less ok with sharing installers for synths that don't have trials. They're only good for like 2 weeks anyway, and inasmuch as that's how trials work, it's fine; though if the company didn't make a trial available, to some extent there is probably some obligation to honor their wishes, since it's their creation/product. I don't particularly feel like further exploring that particular line of thought at the moment, though. On the other hand, I don't think that cracked software/Pocaloids are ok. The intention with those would seem to be to steal permanently and never pay.
The truth is, there is a very accessible way for everyone to have any given vocal synth. It's a two-part strategy: 1) patience and 2) saving. In my opinion, if a person loves a synth enough to go through the effort and risk of breaking the law and stealing it, then they love that synth enough to be patient and save even a few dollars a week until they can purchase it legally, too.
As an aside, I'm not saying I agree with the price of some vocal synths, or even audio software/hardware in general. Digital music/working with vocal synths can be an expensive hobby! And given that one of my favorite aspects of that hobby is how its nature makes it widely accessible (rather than having to work with a human singer, buy many physical instruments, etc., etc.), that has caused me some amount of discomfort. Further, I have to say that I think some of that price is inflated by brand name and other such things. But at the same time, digital music/working with vocal synths is exactly what I said it is--a hobby. It isn't a bread issue. And there are relatively inexpensive computers and free/lower-cost vocal synths available; the decision not to use them and instead to pirate other synths is a matter of desire/preference, which makes that decision even less of a bread issue. I fully support anyone who wants to work with any synth they set their heart on, but given the circumstances of this being a hobby and not a driving need, I think said synth should be acquired legally.
Returning from that tangent, to extend the somewhat logical/emotional point I made regarding how I think a person should go about acquiring a synth they love that they can't presently afford, I'd also add that I personally feel that a pirate isn't showing that synth any kind of respect when they go and pirate it. In my opinion, if a synth had the capacity for a preference, they'd want to be paid for rather than stolen away by force. But that's almost sort of a headcanon thing and is neither here nor there, depending on how you think.
