Adobe is suing Forever 21 for pirating Photoshop

If all ~60 designers pirated photoshop to learn to use it professionally, that's not a problem. When forever 21 gets those ~60 designers copies of photoshop to work with, they should be paying for it. First, it is the right thing to do. Second, it's good risk management. 60 pirated seats is putting a target on your back, and sends a message that it's not okay not to pay when you're making money at scale.

Personally, I'd love to see gimp win (never going to happen, I know), but photoshop is the de facto tool for image manipulation in industry and Adobe has put a ton of work into making it a really good tool. They deserve to be paid for that work. If people don't agree with that, then they should contribute to or help fund OSS development of an alternate tool for that job.

What I would like to see happen though is required symmetry in enforcement, as opposed to selective enforcement. Selective enforcement of copyright is a toxic tool that helps Adobe unfairly maintain market dominance, since it gets everyone hooked and invested in its tools during the learning phase. Not enforcing its copyright on people during the learning phase is implicit approval that pirating is okay. The alternative that they could pursue is to make it freeware, where you get to use it for free until certain criteria are met.