Piracy is basically a protected freedom of the western world. It's sort of funny to think of it that way, but privacy and piracy go hand in hand. Anything that tries to kill piracy is an affront to anyone who appreciates privacy, because invariably it impedes on the honest citizen's right to privacy. So in short, you'll never see piracy go away until we're living under a fascist dictatorship (that actually cares about the rights of the people involved in making pirated goods).
Honestly, I argue that piracy can be good for the industry. It's a strange point of view, but don't dismiss it out of hand. Think of it like this. When you're dealing with a monopoly, quality suffers. Because you can't turn to someone else for your products, prices climb, quality suffers, all because the person with the monopoly knows that they have you by the short hairs and can do whatever they want with you. Despite the different companies making games, they are all big conglomerate companies that can (despite feirce rivalry between them), act collectively like a monopoly - they're the only shows in town, so you either watch their show or you go without.
Enter piracy. In a perfect world piracy exists as an alternative (because, like I said, it goes hand in hand with privacy, and I would imagine the perfect world would have privacy), and the companies acknowledge it. Maybe not condone it, not asking for that, but acknowledge that 1) it exists, and 2) it's a competitor. Then let the companies handle piracy like a company should handle a competitor... competitive prices, and extra incentives to shop there. Trust me, even though piracy is "free", for the vast majority of pirates, it's a pain in the ass.. the loops that pirates have to deal with, viruses, etc.. Yeah, I know, boohoo, poor pirates, but what I'm saying is, game companies provide a better product, almost everytime (as long as it's not riddled with superfluous DRM, which is counterproductive to this "perfect world" I'm building here anyway.).
So game companies continue releasing a better product, provide better service, provide extra incentives to legitimate customers, competitive prices (competing with free may seem difficult but it's not impossible if you have the other pieces of this puzzle). Piracy will keep doing its thing, game developers will keep doing their thing.. people will pirate, but hopefully, the people who care about gaming, and the industries health will continue to buy games.
If the devs would see piracy as an actual competitor instead of some unthinking bacterial infection, then piracy would actually promote a better industry just by being an option in the back of every gamers mind.
