An often ignored aspect of the "piracy" issue, at least on the side of strict intellectual copyright laws, is the matter of quality.  The traditional concept of "pirated" media is that they're cheap, low-quality versions.  Poor quality and a hassle.  Well, perhaps once true, this hardly the case anymore, and the shared versions over the Internet are a significant problem for traditional media because the quality is in fact better.


When you have a better product, it's easier to charge more.  If you have the same product, you can still get the sale based out of guilt and implicit morality.  When your product is worse than what's free, you're a lost cause.


Put in a DVD and you are treated to a series of advertisements showing off the publisher of the content.  Choose to play the content, and you then get the honour of sitting through the warning reminding you that you can get a free version without all this crap, except you shouldn't.  Try and play it in your DVD drive, hopefully the CSS decryption software can manage to work its way past that anti-copying DRM that clearly works so well.


This extends to videogames as well.  How long does it take just to get to the title screen?  Is it entirely necessary to tell me everytime I put in the game to whom the developer outsourced the cinematics?  You've already gotten my money for this product; don't make me less likely to do the same in the future.


The FBI warning is ironically an advertisement unto itself for why it's beneficial to act against it.

It's a matter of how companies combat piracy.  There's a market not simply because it's possible to get the content without directly paying for it.

Legitimate or not, it's a competitor.  If they're going to get anywhere in increasing the legitimate market-share, they need to put together at the bare minimum as good of a product, or else they've lost before they've started.

The only way they have found to combat piracy is what publishers do in China - which is ID large users and negotiate discounted license fees. Short of not charging for their product they are not going to get people to stop stealing.

What I hate about DVD piracy? There is so much piracy that every DVD has this anti piracy commercial on that lasts for ages with pumping techno music. And you cant skip it. 

As I said, you're suggesting a false dichotomy.  There are and will always be those who take advantage of the ease of obtaining illegitimate copies of digital media; that does not mean that there are no ways to actually limit the amount of actual revenue lost from it.