I don't know, Moriador, I really don't, but all I'm saying is that tangible goods are a proven system that works.

Off the top of my head, the only thing that I think will help the situation, is a good quality, preferably ring-bound user guide.  And to make it even more enticing to purchase, they need to show a photo of the manual in the photos, so that people can see that it's ring-bound and they can see that it's a nice chunky manual bursting with information on how to use the thing.  Granted, such a thing isn't going to completely wipe-out piracy of a software product, but it will help, especially with programs as sophisticated as Poser is.

Like I said, off the top of my head, that's all I can think of, but they need to be more inventive, just like Portishead are.  With that boxset I pointed out, there's more than one reason people parted with money for it.  If it were just music, they would have been faced with the same problem the Poser vendors are facing.  They only beat the pirates because they created a tangible product that was enticing enough to sell-out, and like I said, that exclusive Portishead USB key will have helped to sell the boxset as well, that was a stroke of genius, because it's both product and even use-related to not only include an exclusive key, but also to preload it with music.

Haven't got a clue what a vendor would do, and I sympathise with absolutely everyone who has their livelyhood stolen from them by these assholes, but "catching pirates" isn't the answer, beating them at their own game is the answer, and you can only do that by creating something they cannot share over websites at the click of a button.

Whatever the genius answer is for software, it lies somewhere in the area of being tangible.  And I said this before, and no doubt it just gets casually read over, but the bit that's most important is this: no matter how hard you try, no matter where on the internet you go, you will not find that boxset being pirated.  The fact that it's not possible to pirate it and that every copy they made had to be purchased, is proof enough that tangible goods is the answer.

How a software vendor would do that, well now that is the question we should be debating here, isn't it, because if anyone can find a solution to that one, the vendors piracy problem would be solved.