The issue of "software piracy" is a tricky one. I remember back in the day that I had a legit copy of After Effects with it's ADB dongle. But I'd just got a new USB mac (shows you how long ago this was) and needed therefore my dongle swapped for a new USB one. This took a few weeks, so in that time I was without AE. But I'd downloaded the dongle "crack" so I could use my legit software in the meantime. Here was a case where the pirate had an easier time and more functionality than the legit user. At the time I was reviewing software for a print magazine in the UK, and in the review of AE I'd noted that the dongle was a negative. Now you'll find that Adobe have realized this and got rid of the dongle.
You really have got to treat your customers better than the pirates, or your customers will join the pirates. That's the bottom line. There's very little you can actually do about piracy, but what you cannot afford to do is alienate your greatest resource, the paying customer. You should also treat people like you'd like to be treated yourself.
I remember the days when an edit suite would have a chain of maybe 10 dongles trailing off the back of it for all the software and plugins. That chain would be physically unstable, and could crash the system. Why should a legit customer put up with such crap that makes them worse off than the pirate?
Logic used to be dongle protected, now with Apple's ownership, that has gone too. Of course, every dongle ever made has been cracked....
Now it seems that invasive hidden software is the new "solution". It's not a solution, but a problem waiting to happen.
There's nothing inherently "wrong" with copy protection on software, but it should not be designed to give the legit user a "user experience" that is worse than that of the pirate.
Graeme