It IS stealing if you can afford to buy it, but you choose to pirate it. But not if you REALLY would never blow that amount of money on it, in which case you can look at it as only making a copy which doesn't hurt anyone else.
Assume a hobbyist developer downloaded Visual Studio. Do you think he would actually blow 2000$ on it?? It seems Microsoft realizes that anyone who has the cash to buy it will buy it and the rest WILL pirate it, so there is absolutely no protection in Visual Studio.
Whattt?? Visual Studio isn't free?? I swear I downloaded the full version from Microsoft. :bored: