>>IF you think those estimates are accurate I have some land for you in ...
>
>Ok, then several billion a year. Still, wether its a couple million, or a couple billion, why should the company get bashed for doing anything other than just sitting there and taking it?

Mike,

First, at least for North America, I think the numbers of pirated stuff are extremely small. I'm not including the "collectors" here (those who copy anything they can but never actually use it), but companies and people who actually use the pirated stuff.

As for your "why should the company get bashed for doing anything other than just sitting there and taking it", well consider that, for a good long time now, it has really been in (software) companies' interests to have their specific product pirated/used as opposed to someone else's. The former Chairman of Corel is the only executive to actually state so publicly, reasoning that he got two benefits:
1) It is his product that gets learned;
2) He will almost certainly realize a purchase on next version if the product was actually being used and was useful to the pirate.

In other words, what MS once may have used as a form of 'marketing' is rather suddenly being 'criminalized'. Too harsh, too fast.

Just my opinion