I meant that part is completely debatable.

You actually ARE entitled to crack it if you actually buy the game first. crack !=piracy

That completely depends on national laws.
In my country and several other European countries there are laws against it.
They differ from country to country, but basically you're not allowed to circumvent copyright protections.
There are some exceptions like for learning purposes, security testing, etc.
3rd party tools like cracks are illegal according to those laws.
Most people here tend to disagree with that law as do I.
I don't have a problem downloading a 'copy' of a game I bought simply to not be bothered by DRM.
Legal or not, in my opinion that's fair use.

Most places consider that unlawful, you can't actually sign your rights away as such the EULA is just mindless blather and can legitimately be ignored.

Being a member of the abandonware community myself, I won't speak for others, but when I first saw GOG about a year ago, the only thing I could think of was "Finally!". GOG's main goal was and still is the dream come true of the abandonware scene. I didn't have a computer back when Ultima VII first came out, now perhaps someday I'll have the chance to buy it here, because so far I couldn't play it with illegal copies. The upcoming Master of Magic speaks directly to my childhood, always with illegal copies, but now I'd pay the money they charge for new releases for the original box of MoM (or 10 bucks for a legit download) ;-)

I would argue that those downloads that are lost sales are actually a pretty insignificant part, at least where I live (the situation is pretty different in Asia for example). People downloading because they could get it for free, not because they really wanted to have that game, yada yada yaha - but there are some reasonings that are pretty tangible. For example, most of the people I know who download games download lots of them, as of in a couple of dozen a month maybe. Now you just got to ask yourself how much money a person even has to spare for hobbies per month, and how much spare time he has on his hands after work and on weekends. There's just no way any regular working person would be buying 20 new games a month. When I went to school, we would occasionally swap CDs with +/- 10 warez games on them. Sure we loved to play those, but with our allowances we would have been lucky if we could have afforded one of them per month.
I'm not trying to justify pirating games, but I think someone just needs to put a lid on all the lost sale calculations and indemnity claims the industry is throwing around, because they're just insane and they know it. I once read an article in a magazine that analysed the RIAAs statistics and press reports. If I remember correctly, if you go by their "lost sales per year" figures, and compare it to statistics of how much money the average American has got to spare at the end of the month, it would mean that every U.S. citizen would (after rent, food, clothing, insurance, taxes etc.) get into debt to buy music. There was also a case recently where a woman was convicted of sharing music files (I think it was about two dozen tracks). If you looked at the fine she was supposed to pay (she lost the case!) and at the price the music sold at on iTunes, you saw that during the time she had the files and with the upstream of her Internet connection, she couldn't have distributed that many copies even if people were downloading those tracks from her around the clock.
Let them defend their rights. But for god's sake bring them back to the real world.

no, technically you aren't, read the EULA, the game you buy is not your property, you buy a license to use it.

A pirate that can't pirate a game he really like has only another chance to play it: actually buying it, so it's SURE that a part are actually lost sales

F**k quoting
in response to eclipses post above
The LOTS part is completely debatable. And no game cant be pirated.

EULA'S aren't valid in all countries.
In my country they hold no legal value.
Part of the crap in it is actually in violation with laws protecting the rights of consumers.

Several courts in several countries overrule this, saying it is not legal to sign your rights away. If they sell you a hard copy of it, or a copy you can continuously download, then you own the software in quite a few countries.

You own the media it's on, you own the right to use the software, make a backup (as long as you own the original), etc.
However you don't own the software, you possess it.
You don't have the same rights as owners have.

Actually, EULAs are ineffective in MOST countries. The reason is not so much signing away your rights, but that they are only shown to you after you have made the purchase. The contract between you and the provider of the software is made when you buy the package in the store, and all conditions that apply must have been agreed upon beforehand, i.e. the EULA would have to be written on the box to be applicable. I have never heard of any country where the laws would give the EULA any significance whatsoever. As long as you're living in the U.S. or Europe I think its safe to say you can disregard or break anything the EULA says, as long as you do not violate any laws.
In fact I have heard a couple of times already where publishers tried to pull off that "license, not sale" shit, and it never worked. They sell you a license, yes, but if you buy a media they also sell you a copy of the software. The misunderstanding is mostly that publishers failed to make the distinction between selling the software, i.e. a copy of the program on a distributable media, and selling the rights to the software. Selling a customer a CD-ROM to keep and do what they want with it, which is what a software sale is, does not automatically imply that you also give up your copyright unless you state otherwise in an EULA. That's just ridiculous.
That was exactly the point that I was trying to make: you operate under the assumption that people are pirating games because they want to specifically play that game, which IMO is not at all the regular case. People just download the game because it is there, easily and quickly accessible and they can just download and install and play (which has not been the case for many legally bought games for a long time, just as an aside). I am pretty sure that not finding a game for download would not get many of the pirates to shell out lots of money for it. Instead, they will just download another game that they do find for free download, or just forget about it altogether. As I said, most downloaders I know download so many games that it is pretty obvious they don't care too much about the specific games, they just download them because they can easily get them and try them out.

What right do I not have? I have right to sell and lend, copy (for backup purpose, not to distribute) any software I buy. The EULA has no legal bearing in my country so it can't prevent me from doing anything.
Edit: actually don't I have more rights with software than solely physical products as I can't make 'backup' copies of physical products in case they break down?