Was piracy a big problem in the enterprise world (which SaaS focuses on)? My understanding is that piracy is a big no-no for businesses. Nobody bothered to go after consumers but business is a different story.
Yes. I worked for a large company who made engineering software and we had all sorts of license checks that would ping our servers when an unlicensed copy pinged up.
We regularly found IPs linked to large companies using it and the licensing team regularly had a field day. Universities basically got a stern letter because there is no money in chasing those, but large companies certainly got contacted by licensing compliance.
Not especially in the developed world, but everywhere else it was rampant. I suspect one of the things pushing this business model was the ability to extract some profit from regions which would otherwise be paying zilch.
We regularly found IPs linked to large companies using it and the licensing team regularly had a field day. Universities basically got a stern letter because there is no money in chasing those, but large companies certainly got contacted by licensing compliance.