Originally by: Princess Skye

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At the moment most so called 'pirates' are just murderers and should not use the term 'pirate' and then a lot of others who charge a price to enter their space are little more than mafia and should also not identify themselves as 'pirates' but as organised crime syndicates.

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Run and fall or stand in line, in the end what's your's is mine

Originally by: Viceroy

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I'll personally be getting a pair of tights and singing "Yo ho! Yo ho!" for my next victim, while we have a cup of tea and discuss football (In a respectful and polite manner).

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Originally by: Princess Skye

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hmmm - another form of piracy could be that they ask you to abandon ship and have someone in a shuttle in order to take it back to their base - but the general rule of past pirates was that if you fought you got destroyed (podded in eve's case) and if you gave up to their demands then you lost your cargo only - except in the case of battleships in which you lost your ship too and were cast a drift (in your pod).

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Originally by: Wild Rho

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The highway man form of piracy has essentially been killed to due changes in the games mechanics over time.

These are only some examples of things that while not individually responsible together pretty much turned empire piracy into gate "ganks"...

Default 40% insurance...
The victim often has alot less to loose these days and so trying to set a worthwhile ransom fee rarely bears fruit. In the end you often make more isk from taking whatever loot and cargo survives the ships destruction than any ransom you can demand from the ship itself.

Super Sentries...
The changes on sentry guns now make them much much tougher than the old days which means ships camping gates rarely have time to sit and negotiate with the victim as their tank could fail in a short time forcing them to warp out. Add to that the fact that you need to fit modules such as webbers and warp scramblers to hold the victim in place but these very modules will cripple your ships ability to tank as well.
The only other remaining option at a gate is to snipe from it outside sentry range, and you would be truely amazed at how many ships would be prepared to stop approaching the gate or from trying to warp out so you could ransom them from there, so you're remaining option is to just blow them to dust and have a hauler come along and take the loot.

Amoung other things there are several other factors that discourage attempting ransoms...

Log out tactics...
Alot of people still continue to try and log out to save their ships when trapped. The only way to ensure you get them is to have enough firepower to take the ship down before it magically vanishes into lala land and hence, an encouragement to develop high damage "gank" setups.

Risk cushions and easy isk...
Players are much much richer these days and there are a cushions in place for when things do go wrong. This is meant to be an encouragement to pvp but as it reduces the risks and the damage from when risks don't work out it reduces the amount you can expect somone to realistically pay as a ransom and so why bother?

Player attitude...
Most of the time you open a convo to try and ransom people and you will be insulted or simply told to f' off (or similar). While you can understand the person not being happy about it sooner or later you start to wonder what the point of making the effort is and so simply shooting them first and ignoring any flames later becomes more attractive.

Inability to actually hunt...
Often people cry about gate campers and ask why we don't go and attack people in the belts etc. Simple answer is that hunting requires an ability to ambush the prey before they know what's going on. Becuase of the local channel this is more or less impossible unless the target is afk, asleep, stupid or has suddenly gone blind and more often than not your target is long long gone before you can find where they were.
Add to that that you only tend to find miners and npcers in asteroid belts where as traders/haulers and mission runners don't go anywhere near them. However, everyone has to use gates so that's where the best pickings are.

There are a great deal more reasons for piracy becoming what it is. The devs have been on a mission to kill it off for some time (or so it certainly seems) and have so far managed to turn it into what you get today. Speaking personally I only know of a handful of corps that actively organised themselves in order to make lower sec systems better, the typical reaction of most other players is to demand the devs to do somthing about it for them instead of making the effort to secure the space themselves (either due to laziness or lack of imagination).

Oh and just becuase YOU don't define piracy as what it is today in eve doesn't mean it isn't actually piracy to other people.

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