hedwards: As far as the legality goes, there's very little question. It will vary somewhat from place to place, but it's still piracy, whether or not a jurisdiction allows it to be enforced. In some places, the matter hinges upon whether or not the individual is being paid.
Well, there's piracy and piracy. The first is "Let's crack a few hundreds of games, burn them to CDs (or DVDs) and trade them!". The latter is "I backed up a copy of game and gave the disk to my girlfriend, because the game was great and I wanted to share it"
Even Steam works this way: you may tell your login and password to anybody, and that person will be able to play all your games in Steam. Obviously, you won't be able to play them at the same time yourself, but it's not cruel.
Also, EULA of Myst III: Exile (I'm sure there're more similar EULAs, but I have no proofs right now) says that I'm allowed to install the game on _any_ number of PCs, but I'm not allowed to run more than one copy of the game installed from one CD at the moment. That's also fair, I guess.
hedwards: I could be wrong, but I think Russia is a bit like China where piracy is more or less rampant…
I work at (legal) video game store, and I can tell that the word "rampant" is incorrect. It's common, yes, but not rampant. A lot of people pay for games, and not only on release day (when it's the only way to get a copy). Also, prices for video games here in Russia are _really_ low, especially comparing to prices in Europe.
There're just two factors, which make people not to buy legal copies: terrible localization (it's far more often than you can imagine) and pirate video game stores. Yes, the whole shops full of pirated disks — and customers don't even know it's pirated. That's the worst case of pirating, IMO.
Oh wait, and there's also the third factor — DRM. That's why I'm here, yes.
hedwards: …and the laws aren't particularly well enforced.
Sad but true.