I'd note that jailbreaking and Cydia are not about piracy or encouraging piracy (they're about much more - tons of people even buy jailbreak-only tweaks/themes/etc. from the Cydia Store). Some percentage of people do find ways to get pirated apps after jailbreaking, but those people have to go out and install additional sources/tools beyond the default Cydia install.
"Saurik said that many of the pirates he's dealt with are just kids, no more than teenagers, very smart but with not much solid life experience to speak of. And he said that like children, they were both vengeful (they will give bad reviews and attack developers who attack them), and easily won over -- sometimes, by just sending a nice email, he was able to get a former pirate to cooperate with him or even '...come over to the light side.'"
"The best solution to piracy, he said, was to convert the pirates -- don't disable their app or attack them (because likely, they will simply blame the app rather than learn a lesson), but instead inform them that they're breaking the rules, and give them an easy way to do things right. One app Saurik described simply put a one-time notice in the app that the user was using a pirated version, and saw sales spike when the notice went out."
I appreciate it's about more. My reservations towards jail breaking were more about performance and use rather than piracy to be honest. I should have expanded on my point further.
I don't believe you should be tied into your phones "terms" of operation but in my situation I found the hack pointless and unnecessary. Not to say that it doesn't suit everyone though!
If I take Cydia out the equation there, I stand by my point that I prefer to pay for the goods. Jail breaking and Cydia were used just to get my point across.
The Cydia founder talked about app piracy in a talk a while ago: http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/13/360idev-saurik-on-the-mobile-... - it fits in:
"Saurik said that many of the pirates he's dealt with are just kids, no more than teenagers, very smart but with not much solid life experience to speak of. And he said that like children, they were both vengeful (they will give bad reviews and attack developers who attack them), and easily won over -- sometimes, by just sending a nice email, he was able to get a former pirate to cooperate with him or even '...come over to the light side.'"
"The best solution to piracy, he said, was to convert the pirates -- don't disable their app or attack them (because likely, they will simply blame the app rather than learn a lesson), but instead inform them that they're breaking the rules, and give them an easy way to do things right. One app Saurik described simply put a one-time notice in the app that the user was using a pirated version, and saw sales spike when the notice went out."