Here's an answer for the edit.
Reason the copy protection still exists are time and inertia.
Take computer games for example. Fans of famous series get all hyped up before release of newest edition of the game. Publishers hope that people will buy original game instead of waiting for cracked version to appear on the scene. As other have said, groups race to publish their cracks. Publishers often try to place hidden checks in programs which aren't immediately obvious. For example in Settlers 3, if I remember correctly, buildings which were supposed to produce steel made meat in cracked versions. So if a group misses that, another group will make so called "proper" and hope to gain prestige by fixing issues which first group missed. This cycle can last for some time and will frustrate users of pirated versions. Publishers hope that in that time they will decide to get original version.
Another way which was pioneered by Stardock, I think, is use of downloadable content. Original game owners will have to log in to a web service and download some new extras which are available only to owners of original game. This way they hope that pirates will get original version in order to get the extras.
As for inertia part, here's an analogy. Back in times of my grandparents, few people in my country used locks on their front doors. Just having a lock was a bit strange. As level of urbanization increased, crime rate increased and locks were needed for some time. The increase of crime was fallowed by increase of activity of law enforcement and things are pretty safe now, but people still use locks because it became part of tradition. They don't think if they are going to place a lock on the front door or not. They just get one with a lock, just like everybody else. They still use lock designs which are 20-30 years old even though they know that such locks can be picked by any professional criminal with little effort.
I have a feeling that it's same situation in software industry. It just became normal to have some type of software protection. Yes, there are programmers which just display a message like "I know you're using pirated version!" and let user continue, but the default response is to get some type of protection. Sometimes for programs with small user base or very specialized programs this will work because they aren't of interest to warez d00dez. At other times it will help by delaying use of newest version of a program until crack is available.
Sometimes the decision is not in the hands of competent people. Often lawyers or various clerks decide which type of protection is needed even if they have no idea if it's going to be effective or not. Instead they decide what looks good to them or what their colleagues are using or whose brochure is shiniest or who is cheapest and so on. I remember back when Vista was new, some of the criticism about digital restrictions management mentioned that new graphics cards will have to be entirely covered by coolers from all sides so that pirates won't be able to directly connect to the exposed pins on the cards and "steal" the signal from blu-ray disks that way. Obviously whoever thought of that had no idea that people which have enough knowledge and equipment to get a signal form video card while it's being processed aren't going to be stopped by something as simple as a cooler covering entire card.