All efforts to deal with software piracy (broadly defined) are futile. The day will come, perhaps soon, when any product that can be expressed in pure information will be, de facto, free.
What this means is that the winners in the new economy will be people who can figure out how to put competitive products into hardware implementations. The only barriers to entry will be the ability to design products in this way and apply manufacturing know-how.
The alternative is general-purpose machines and free software—which means an economy dominated by a few monopolies. We’re getting a preview with Wintel.