The risk is basically nothing. You get a notification saying "don't do that again". In my younger days I helped distribution with various scene groups to the tune of terabytes of files. I think I got a few notices that ended in the garbage. At the time I was getting cracked copies from employees of ILM and pixar
The EFF exists for a reason. Hopefully not a reason that you'll ever personally need, but if that day comes and the hammer comes down on you, you'll be thankful people prepared for that situation.
> The eff doesn't exist to defend pirates so that is irrelevant.
That depends on your definition of piracy. The EFF strongly fights against the DMCA.
> Pirating in every shape in form has to be one of of the lowest crimes to get caught for.
Low in terms of what? Punishment? A fair number of people have received harsh punishments, as already mentioned. You mention you were caught distributing a lot of pirated material, so the probability of getting caught seems high. The fraction of people that received a non-trivial punishment of those caught distributing a lot of pirated material is higher than 1/180 million.
No I did not mention I was caught in any significant way. I never had a worry in the world about getting caught. Outside of receiving a no consequence piece of paper in the mail that means nothing.
It matters for the people that create and distribute the cracks. Its much easier to simply dump the crack file/source on your website and freely distribute it if its legal to do so.
