The flip side is that an EULA *only* binds the purchaser, whereas copyright law binds everyone regardless of how they obtained the software.
So if a purchaser chose to flout the EULA and give a copy to a friend *only* he could be sued - not his friend or anyone who obtained the software from his friend even if they distributed it further. In addition contract law, I think, doesn't have the same sort of statutory damages provisions that copyright law does - so when suing the initial purchaser the company could only get damages for the direct action of him giving a single copy to his friend - at most the purchase price of the software.
That is, of course, assuming that the original purchaser can be identified in the first place - requiring waging a war on crackers (whose activities might even be legal provided they don't buy their own copies) using ever more sophisticated watermarking and online registration schemes.
tl;dr you can drive a truck through the loopholes in a EULA based business model, so although it might be attempted it is unlikely to be viable.
Re: You?
So if a purchaser chose to flout the EULA and give a copy to a friend *only* he could be sued - not his friend or anyone who obtained the software from his friend even if they distributed it further. In addition contract law, I think, doesn't have the same sort of statutory damages provisions that copyright law does - so when suing the initial purchaser the company could only get damages for the direct action of him giving a single copy to his friend - at most the purchase price of the software.
That is, of course, assuming that the original purchaser can be identified in the first place - requiring waging a war on crackers (whose activities might even be legal provided they don't buy their own copies) using ever more sophisticated watermarking and online registration schemes.
tl;dr you can drive a truck through the loopholes in a EULA based business model, so although it might be attempted it is unlikely to be viable.