All in all I think piracy cannot be stopped, and honestly I don't even think all the big companies want to completely end it as it is, after all free advertising of their products.
It is different across different companies.
But I think they mostly wanted to kill piracy. It is not a free advertising or such. But there are some business that profited from piracy, namely the DRM companies and other self-proclaiming IP security consulting companies. These semi-charlatan profiteers are good for nothing that increase the cost of software distribution. Like war-mongering weapons manufacturer, as long as there is bad things going on, they are happy to sell their stuff to software companies to fight the piracy with what is seemingly a useless tool.
One of my best ideas to fight it is to somehow "be-friend" the pirates themselves. Let them pirate your software, and you know it, but you can offer the end-users ways to legitimate the pirated copies. Just like Microsoft did with unlicensed Windows copies, you can just buy the license online, bang not a pirated software in an instant!
In order for this to work, they have to limit the distribution of software fixes/patches/updates. So let there be stingy people or clueless noobs or true pirates out there using outdated/buggy products of yours, nobody can't claim software company's money from them. But those with morale calls can somehow contribute to your other revenues.
