My opinion is this: piracy is an important part of the game industry, and often takes many forms. Banning people for it won't cut down on it, only hurt discussion, and lead to a more restricted debate.
That being said, I very much don't like piracy for the purpose of getting free stuff. I can't say I've *never* done that (mostly when I was around 11-14 and had no money), but my collection of 200+ console and handheld games would say I'm a pretty active game consumer.
However, not all piracy is bad, much is quite neutral. Ways that I've pirated stuff in recent memory include:
Platform shifting (own a game on one system, pirate it for another)
When I've lost discs
When discs are scratched to hell
When I'm too lazy to find my discs (my personal main reason, heh)
To try it (I recently bought a 360 game as a direct result of a pirated PC version)
Emulation (oftentimes, I'll download a ROM of a VC game I own, to play on my laptop
Or the stupidest case ever: Spore. I bought a copy of it, the DRM hated me, after screwing with it, I decided to just get a pirated copy. It worked better than the one I paid for. GG EA.
