Hmm...
To be honest, I really don't know. At all. Piracy is bad, but attempts to police it almost always do a lot more harm than good (example: Spore. DRM was massively unpopular, prevented reinstallation/ reformatting, and, if anything, resulted in MORE pirates being defiant. Not to mention the expense). It might be better to try and work around it... I suppose including actual online content is one way, or just making so that the people who play the games actually don't mind paying to support the company.
I was willing to make that call towards Valve/Steam about how their frivolous lock-outs with no alternative solutions (in case someone was having financial problems, or were indeed hacked, but the hacker was not called out, or if they thought they were hacked, but actually overdrawn in their bank accounts, and needed to recover ASAP to pay their bills) actually encourage piracy because they read calm winds as hurricanes, and spilled water like a dam breaks. I mean, I've seen cases where even $1 chargebacks were treated like million-dollar bank fraud. There are some pissed off people angry with Valve about crap like this.
An opinion, how is it that honesty and legitimacy has more of a chance of backfiring to the consumer than piracy? I use Steam as the case. You're honest the whole time, clean record; a minor flub in accounting, a little paranoia later, and now it's taking a year to fix something that takes everyone less than a week to fix, and that's following all procedures as stated by the provider as to how to solve something, and that's the ONLY solution to the problem. No alternatives.
Simply put: I overdrafted during a sale (because my sister also forgot to cash in my check within a window of time she could have), I thought I was hacked into, I called for a chargeback of my lost funds and revoked the overdrafts as well, and even explained the situation to the bank and Valve regarding it. I return to the bank after I earned enough to recover damage from both parties (pay off the chargeback to Valve, and pay back any overdraft that might come along with it); the bank advised that that could be a bad idea considering that with the amount of time that passed, the damage could have gotten worse, and the backdraft could get worse as well. The BANK advised I seek alternative solutions with Valve to prevent my account from going all screwy, and to prevent fraud accusation from the bank as well, and also to avoid tons of unnecessary paperwork. I explain this to Valve. They won't accept any alternative solutions, no matter how much easier on them it would be. I even went as far as explaining that this is the crap that encourages piracy (but I didn't send that message yet). I even have explanations of how cutting some slack to everyone will in fact benefit everyone (especially Valve profit-wise). They're not responding.
Now I have something to toss in here; if you already bought the license to a game/product in the past, lost it or cannot access it anymore (like this stupid-ass Valve situation), would it still be considered somewhat legal to obtain the product by any other means as a means of backup? I mean, I still have my product keys for these products. So what if the acquirement of the backup was not quite legal. I still own a license of my own to prove prior ownership.
My opinion on piracy is that some cases are crimes. Other cases are justified (as far as I would consider with mine; I have my keys, but being locked out of a service (like Steam), whereas I own the games legally, I should still be able to play a downloaded copy, provided I have my key as proof.), and plenty others is not worth crying over spilt milk (abandonware anyone? Some games are collected and not played even (yes there are collector pirates that collect for the sake of collecting or archiving)). Now I do somewhat agree with selling products made "free for the provider", but not the customer of the "provider". I understand labor costs (like let's say, a series of MAME roms on DVDs or something; the price? provide the DVDs and pay for shipping yourself; provider will worry about the other details.), however, if the product being sold is a free Indie game/product, we've got problems. Not only is the product being sold not the provider's, but it's also released for the public for free, and is being sold for a price.
I'm rather indifferent about the whole piracy debate, but I do say, some cases make sense, others don't, and plenty of times they can be justified with good reasons. As for other parts of piracy, like the collectors and such, we're keeping history alive.
I mean, if not for certain 'pirates' I could'nt have found (or found out) entire series that TV stations merely threw away, whether long-lived and loved, or short-lived shows that didn't even finish a season; or series/shows completely forgotten by their original stations (*cough*classic Disney/Loony Toons*cough*WB cartoons*cough*Classic Nickelodeon*cough*). Same could be said about games as well. I was able to recover my childhood at the price of lots and lots of waiting; compared to lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of waiting, to pay 50 bucks for 3 classic games that I don't even remember. Time has value too. So, for those that have archived our history and continued to distribute them to keep them from fading into obscurity (which is also semi-responsible for some of the past being revived and rebooted with today's stuff/qualities), I tip my hat to you.
I mean, it's nice to pass on my good experiences from the past with my family's next generation. I mean, even my nieces and nephew can tell the quality difference from classic Donald Duck cartoons with the cheeseball live-action shows that dominate the station nowadays (They actually laugh with the cartoons, and they zone-out with the live-action). I mean, you can ask a child in these recent generations who Mickey Mouse is, they'll still know, he's the logo/primary mascot for Disney; but what about his dog Pluto? "Who's that?", they'll respond, "I know who Donald Duck is, he can cast magic, and Goofy can use a shield, and is the Heavy for the team." (:facepalm:, I wasn't talking about Kingdom Hearts you dolt.). "Who's Scroodge McDuck? Who's Darkwing Duck? Who are the Rescue Rangers?" and so on... I am curious, are these kids even aware that most of the artists that have plagued our radio stations for a good amount of time came from The Mickey Mouse Club or KIDS Incorporated (not a fan of either show, and considering as time passes, these shows get worse. Get ready to destroy your radios in the next few years.) that aired on that station as well? And this is just ONE channel. I still have a handful more.
...So yeah. Again, I tip my hat off to those collector 'pirates' for keeping history alive with their provisions/videos/torrents. And also to sites that talk about them, even if in satire.