In the discourse of business ethics, illegal economic undertakings are usually presented as archetypal cases of unethical behavior. This article tries to nuance this view by studying the ethics of an illegal subculture, and particularly its formalized 'codes of conduct', as a valid area of inquiry for business ethics. Based on a prolonged ethnographic study of warez, i.e. illegal games of competitive donation undertaken on the Internet, this article thus argues for a more pluralistic approach to the study of business ethics by showing how formalized ethics can arise out of economic activities that are usually perceived as amoral. By doing a reading of the community's set of rules and the moralizations entailed in these, the role of codes of conduct is discussed as a general case of ethical argumentation. The article closes with a call for an extended view on business ethics.