Piracy is a fact of life for intellectual properties. It happens, it's always happened, it's always going to happen.
QFT- that's one of the reasons I do what I do.
Bottom line is this: They can sue us, we can't sue them.
If its a "IP for sale" pirate site, you can actually get them shut down for short periods of time by complaining to/taking legal action against the companies that process their cash flow. No cash flow means the business isn't worth jack anymore.
Of course, they usually just shut down and pop up again under a different name, but if you think of it like crunching cockroaches...
And if they're just giving it away...that's a whole different kettle of fish. You can actually get things done by going to the officials in the country- even if you're talking about Russia or China. Its just going to cost you money to do so- often more than you're losing via piracy. IOW, its kind of in the dark "sweet spot" of economics called the economically efficient level of criminal activity."
...the point about "Nascaar is popular, sci fi shows are not! It must be piracy!" misses a much broader social context and is pretty dismissive of Nascaar.
I think he was just saying that the geek population tends to kill the goose laying the golden eggs by circumventing IP rights, or simply fast forwarding through all the commercials with their TIVOs etc., while things like NASCAR do an excellent job of getting their fans to tie into the products that are marketed to them. And we're not talking just one time sales spikes- its lifetime commitments and repeat sales. Its very easy to measure the impact of getting advertisements during a NASCAR event- or on one of the cars- and its much greater than any sci-fi franchise out there.