I would love to do an encompassing, in-depth article examining all the arguments surrounding the issue and coming to well-founded conclusions backed by hard data, but as it turns out, someone else did it for me.  Koroush Ghazi, the guy behind the excellent one-man site TweakGuides.com, has created an incredible article that says everything that I could or would want to say about piracy, and I highly recommend that everyone read it all the way through.  It’s long, but I promise that it’s worth it.  You may find it here:

PC Game Piracy Examined

Additionally, I highly recommend checking out anything else on his site that may be relevant to you.  His tweak guides for games have never lead me astray and I follow his Tweaking Companion guide to the letter every time I set up a new machine.  As a result, I’ve always had games running faster on a machine that is more stable than I’d previously thought possible, and all because I was willing to spend a little more time making sure everything is installed properly.  Over the years, the amount of time I’ve saved not having to deal with issues that poorly set-up system will give you has made the extra time investment worth it a thousand times over.

Oh, and to assuage any suspicion from any cynics out there, I’ve never had any interaction with Koroush beyond reading what he puts on his site.  I’m writing this here now simply as a way to share the love, get some edjumucashun goin’, and with any luck, prevent an unimaginable number of headaches.