Even in the video space, the analog hole is slowly being patched with hardware attested DRM and HDCP, so pervasive now that they're baked into web standards. Dolby Vision has yet to be cracked IIRC, which means pirated movies/TV can be worse than the legitimate one.
There'll probably always be insider leaks though (ie. someone with inside access to a master copy leaks it).
That's why I said they lose eventually and only in retrospect. In the meantime (decades or centuries) they dominate indeed.
But entropy is always at work. The last 3 years we've seen a torrent of "X site has been breached" and I have no doubt that 80% of all breaches never make it to the news. Which means the vested interests' techniques (SaaS / hosted services like games) aren't fault-proof either. The pendulum is still swinging.
As for stuff like HDCP and Dolby Vision, yeah, those are worrisome. :|
And we all want to be paid for our work.
But apparently people think software must be free. And I've known people making $30,000+ a month who pirated games. I've known lawyers and high-profile accountants begging on forums for a $150 program (paid once for a lifetime license) to be cracked. Those people made at least $10,000 a month in a third-world country. Basically one level below the millionaires. WTF, right?
I've read enough history to notice that the vested interests are always fighting a losing battle (only long-term and in retrospect anyway). So maybe we need another approach because rebelling against reality gets us nowhere IMO.
Sorry if this is too philosophical but I thought I should offer you a point of view that doesn't involve a work life which is comprised of a constant game of tug of war. At one point we all should accept the world as it is and try to work around its flaws.
One example: there are games that can detect that you are running a pirated version and they deliberately hide part of the in-game content from you (I think Witcher 3?). That alone was enough for a guy I knew to begrudgingly buy the game (he wasn't poor either). As said in another comment also in reply to you: if piracy ushers in inconvenience then they'll buy.
We can never get rid of piracy. There's a ton of extremely sharp reverse engineers out there. But we can make it hard enough for the users of our pirated products so they just give up. I've seen it applied successfully but I'll admit that it's a hard thing to pull off.
Or ultimately, if that constant arms race tires us, we should branch out to other (sub-)careers. I myself am seriously considering exiting web programming, I am sick of it already, for many reasons.