There are two prospective of this issue.
1-Yes it is really threat for some companies who are spending millions of dollor in research and development of software's and if they are not in position to get return of it(in case of piracy), probably they will not be able to sustain themselves in Market. But there is on other side some people say that big joints of software industry are themselves invloved in piracy of their softawre's in order to get reputation of their products like MS Windows in Pakistan which is pirated in Massive quantity rather then using Linux OS which is Freely available. After that when people became habitual of using this kind of software's the companies starts legal action against using by raiding the companies and shops.

2-Although piracy is not ethical, but in some cases like in Pakistan it is good for students beacuse they have not enough purchase power to buy lincense CD's .If Pirated CD's would not be avialbale many of them will be deprived of IT Education.