I think it's safe to say that almost all people, including people on GOG have pirated at least something once in their lives

Whether it's Music, Movies or Games

Hell, I'll admit to Piracy myself right here and now if that will make anyone feel better

When I was 14 in 2003 and had no money I copied Warcraft 3 from a friend (I eventually bought the game to play multiplayer and because it was so awesome)

A lot of people here on GOG are Converted pirates that now buy games on GOG because of GOG's attitude towards customers and their business practices

I use cracks all the time - and I really mean ALL the time. I bought the entire Geneforge series from Spidersoft on Steam and guess what? I downloaded a keygen so I could register the demos so I wouldn't be forced to use Steam. (the earlier versions needed a hack to properly work for me, and the Steam version adds some shitty code to the executable meaning the hack didn't work, so screw that).

I've done the same for Morrowind which I just reinstalled off CD, same with most games really. The noise of my DVD drive spinning is too annoying for me not to mention that it's a great way to get your DVDs or CDs scratched. In essence, cracks are a service to legal gamers as well by removing tedious protections that never stopped anyone from playing a pirated copy but do massively annoy legal players.

I'd love to read this exception in US law, I'm not aware of any such exception existing in legal code or case law, do you have a source that states that "illegal" work (whatever that means legally speaking) is not offered copyright protection?

I base it on the US law: http://copyright.gov/title17/

Please read chapter 1. There's no exclusions to my knowledge for works deemed "illegal". If you have an actual resource that goes over case law or actual law (amendment or otherwise) I'd love to read it (because it's entirely possible I'm wrong with regard to US law, and being very interested in the subject I'd love to know that). Otherwise you just be making shit up, yo.

So i wrote to copyright.gov as my search and reading the copyright law proved futile (one way or another).
They said they cannot really help and should phone specialists. They did say this:
"In general, the right to make a derivative work, i.e., a work derived from or based upon an original work, is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner. What you have described may be viewed as creating a derivative work and thus may require permission from the copyright owner."
I asked them about cracks for programs.