That's very true. I used to pirate every game I wanted to play. I now own almost 200 steam games.
It looks like one of those legal scams is ging to blow up in their face, i read that the Urmann & Collegen lawfirm was using skimming attacks in Germany to blackmail redtube-users.
I think that sharers should not invest in vpn-connections, they should pool that money for legal protection. If those legal scam artists saw them selfs confronted with a large organization instead of individuals, they would not risk going after file-sharers & small-time-content-pirates.
I endorse piracy as long as there are no legal counterparts that offer low-margin access to digital content such as netflix. Because the old-school content distributors are just useless middlemen trying to make a profit off somebody else's work, they are not that different from pirate-bay, one-click-hosters or uploaders. Manipulating laws through corruption to hold on to a dead business-model is the greater crime. It just fosters parasites.
Piracy started as a way to cheat, but now it looks more like a tool to clear the way for better and fairer digital-content-transactions.
Given that laws are basically up for sale, i consider them nothing more than suggestions. If its a free-for-all ... it is a free-for-all.