First off, to all of you who've stolen software, and I will include myself in that list, you (and I) suck. You have only yourself to blame for how damn difficult and frustrating it is to install and update software. Writing software is incredibly complex and time consuming. When you steal it, you are mostly ripping off people like yourselves — creative thinkers who love music and are trying to make something cool and unique. In most cases they're making far less money than they could if they applied their talents elsewhere in a more corporate or governmental arena. I mean, who do you think makes more money, Dave Amels who wrote the code for the Bomb Factory plug-ins, or the guy who writes code for missile guidance systems for bombs sold to the government? Dave and his partner Erik Gavriluk started Bomb Factory as a labor of love, but thanks to rampant theft of their software, their only real choice was to work at it essentially for free or sell their plug-ins to Digidesign, which they ultimately did as they were so frustrated.
If you are using someone's software as a tool to make or record music, you should pay for it. You don't steal guitars, or even guitar picks from the locally owned music store do you? If you're earning a living making or recording music, you have even less excuses to steal software. You're making your living by denying someone else the ability to do the same. You are a parasite.
Okay, with that out of the way, copy protection sucks.