My theory on this is that I never pirate something instead of buying it. If it's something that's useless that I wouldn't have bought in the first place... no one is really losing money.
All the apps in the App Store are of good quality and made, in large, by small developers. I say support the development of iPhone apps. It'd suck if a year from now the App Store fails because nobody is making money and small devs can't afford the 99 dollars to post. We'd have nothing then.
Be real... Buy the app, then crack the ipa if you want to change the icon.