Good. People would be faced with the fact that their commiting a crime, and this will lower game prices by $5-10.I hope the 4th time (going online illegally) means jail. If it was up to me, thieves would go to prison.
So don't bet on it saving you money - Theft diminishes supply and demand in a balanced fashion both the supply and the demand are reduced, and the change in price is going to depend on the elasticity of the market.
IP piracy cannot diminish supply (Which effectively is equivalent to whatever demand is, barring trivial reproduction/server costs), only demand, so the cost equations work differently.
If most profitable end price is determined by supply and demand, then piracy can not (by definition, presuming idealized markets) raise the cost of a game - the price point that maximizes ((cash per copy) * (Copies sold)) is fixed. It's like the argument that eliminating the gas tax will lower gas prices - if the market price is 4.10/gal, then eliminating the gas tax just means that money goes straight to the gas station instead of being set aside to fix roads - the supply and demand have not changed, so, *by definition*, the market price has not changed.
By the same token - reproduction costs being trivial on a per item basis, piracy can'y really affect supply (Only if it becomes so rampant as to make the fixed expenses of production higher than the profit from the market, at which point supply goes from infinite to zero.) and can only marginally affect demand (Since it can only decrease the demand in the market already unwilling to pay the for the item - i.e., in the market that wasn't actually part of the market.)
So you still have the same effective supply and demand as you did before. The only thing fighting piracy can do is, ah, slim your profit margins by wasting money fighting it without actually affecting either the supply or the demand for your product, raising your overhead without any corresponding raise in price.
Which, come to think of it, I seem to vaguely recall somebody posting something about - uh - -frog something? Sorry, I'm a newbie here, I think he must be a fan of the Iconians or something? Anybody know him?
{G} - Jonnan