I understand the reasons for it and support the right of companies to protect their creations. However, there is evidence to support the belief that the current implementations only hurt legitimate users of the product. This validates French philosopher Michel Foucault's idea that one-upsmanship of this kind fosters the production of smarter criminals as the persistent surveillance of panopticism spreads into general society. But let's give companies the benefit of the doubt, for the moment. Let's assume that they're not idiots, and remember that there are at least two sides to every issue, and often more.
Companies make a tremendous investment in bringing games to market.
There are human faces behind every box on the shelf, including entertainment software. The artists, the programmers, the public relations staff all have to pay the bills just like the rest of us while the game is in development, and that takes money. The companies gamble that a successful game will help them recoup their initial investment and provide enough profit to allow them to start the development cycle over again. That profit margin may be reduced by people who copy games and never purchase them, if we assume that some of these people would have paid for some of these games in the first place. Though corporations and the SPA will allege hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, that checks out only if you assume that every piece of pirated software represents a lost sale.