>> Let's forget for a moment that ...

Good thing I said "let's forget that", huh?

> How do you make that logical jump?

Please keep reading?

> The small shops in the middle get it the worst.

Those small shops you keep mentioning, they don't exist anymore. There was a very small decade during which they did exist... shareware shops. Those were really crap. Boy I'm glad they're gone. You know what replaced them? Web apps shops (online-only, no piracy there) and mobile apps shops (where piracy has a much, much higher barrier of entry and is comparatively non-existant).

So as I said, software piracy is more or less a solved problem.