Ultimately the whole thing boils down to enforcement. If there were no consequences to me walking into a shop, picking up a laptop and walking out why would I ever pay for one? The same is true for software, if everyone could pirate software with no consequences at all then there would be no disincentive everyone not to do it. You could argue that if everyone did this then everyone would lose out as the developers would go out of business and there would be no software for anyone, however that's just an example of the tragedy of the commons.

The situation we have now is one of Risk vs Reward, if you can't afford something you could try and steal it and you might get caught, as you can't afford it your only choices are to take the risk or not have it, the willingness to take the risk vary depending on perceived need. Whereas if you can afford it, but choose to steal it so you can spend the money on something else then you are taking a bigger risk because the consequences to you are more severe, after all you can't take money away from a beggar that has none.

Back to my original point, the BSA and their ilk are there to make sure the people who DO buy the product continue to do so rather than try and cut corners. They make the big noise about lost revenue because they need those figures to make sure they can convince governments to keep the consequences harsh.

Brick and mortar game retailers have been the architects of their own demise on this one. For years they have devoted the majority of their stores to the various different console platforms and their customers upped sticks and left. I've watched the PC section in my local Game store go from 8 panels back in the days of the XBox and Playstation to 2 panels today. Why would I want to buy a game from a store like this? The choice is more or less limited to the latest chart games and new releases. Steam lets me choose from a vast catalogue and find the games I want to play. The convenience of the games stores was their main driving force, if I wanted a game I had only to go into town and buy it. It was faster than Steam and you also got a nice box and manual, or at least you used to. These days if you want a boxed PC game you have to order it online as the local shop won't have it in stock. If you're going to have to order it online, you might as well use Steam, you'll get it faster.

The upgrade route is all well and good, but as you can't upgrade from x86 to x64 then the upgrade route isn't really encouraging people to finally make that leap, something which really should be encouraged for those with capable hardware. Otherwise we're going to find ourselves in the two tier system of DX9 and DX10+ all over again when programs want to take advantage of extra memory.

May I refer you to the case of Arkell v. Pressdram. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye#Litigation

That system wouldn't help you I'm afraid. Standard forensics procedure is to make an image of your disk and work off that (to preserve the evidence in the original disk). So if you give them the destruct key they'll just reimage and come talk to you again.

The Judean People's Front?