I gave my usual answer that piracy is dumb. Simply put in todays world of viruses, spyware, identity theft, and other things it's not worth the risk. Even if you get away with it hundreds of times all it takes is once to render all that you gained irrelevent from the damage you can do.
Despite what the industy might say, I do not consider things like fansubbs of unreleased anime, abandonware, and similar things to be piracy. Such groups tend to operate openly and are quite good about releases and copyrights. I am less wary of dealing with them for that reason when I have the desire.
I also believe in people's right to get the version of a product they want. If for some reason a game or movie is released legally in your area in a censored format, I feel doing what you have to to obtain an uncensored version is not immoral and only the censored one you could buy should be off limits. In general though I recommend finding work arounds that put money in the hands of the creators before other possibilities. For example waaay back in the day when "The Witcher" was released censoered in the US, I simply bought an uncensored copy and had it imported. People akin to Michael Atkinson (every country has their versions today it seems) are making this increasingly harder to do however.
All of this said, this does not mean I agree with the industry much nowadays. Simply put it's become too corrupt and greedy. It refuses to fight censors, and engages in illegal and immoral practices like price fixing.
I'm a big supporter of the American idea of capitolism. The idea that your allowed to pursue as much profit as possible, but are supposed to do so within a competitive enviroment. Meaning that monopolies, and cartel behavior (price setting, etc..) are supposed to be illegal. Competition within an industry encouraging companies to release the best products they can at the lowest prices they can afford to compared to others. The best quality at the best price being the guys who dominate, this also encourages innovation toward achieving this goal.
Right now the game industry as a whole coordinates to set prices. A brand new triple A title with a half billion dollar development budget, goes for the same amount as a relatively fly by night company's product that was developed on a comparitive shoestring. What's more game companies will shuffle the release schedules around in coodination specifically to avoid titles having to compete with each other. For example when a big title like "Modern Warfare" has it's release date finalized, all the other companies push up their titles so as not to compete with it as opposed to everyone involved trying to undercut each other as much as possible to get as many sales as possibile within the time period.
This behavior only persists this way because the US goverment (and those with similar ideals) doesn't much care at the moment, and politicians only look at the game industry when it comes to content and ratings nowadays.
What game companies do nowadays is just as wrong and illegal as it is for gas companies (which the goverment investigates more seriously). The ironic thing is some of the statements I see here and there about the industy doing this or doing that are basically the business equivilent of a murderer standing there over a recently killed victim with a bloody axe in hand while the police just wave and say "hi" as they walk on drinking their coffee.
Despite how some of this might sound, I don't much care for piracy on principle. However I also dislike the people that are being victimized it in ever increasing ways. From where I sit, it basically seems like a bunch of gang bangers poaching the mafia. The industy taking a moral stance about piracy and such is a bloody joke. "Hey your illegally infringing on my illegally operating business and effectively stealing from what I stole!".
I might support the industry more despite things, if like in an old Mafia movie they occasionally came out as "Good bad guys" to protect neighborhoods against worse elements, defend the church, and feed some of the stuff back into the community or whatever. But like the real mafia as opposed to the fantasy version they don't care. Heck they don't even stand up to censors when it's also in their best interests because it's too much work and everyone would rather hope someone else eventually does it while Atkinson and his political equivilents throughout the world go on a Godzilla like rampage, trashing human rights in lieu of Tokyo.
