🚀 go-pugleaf

I believe that there has not yet been a court case that has established
that even shrinkwrap license agreements are valid.  If there was such
a case, it might be applied to shareware.

In many states, contracts are not recognized unless money has changed
hands.  This is why you sometimes see public facilities leased to 
charitable organizations for a buck a year.

Previous piracy lawsuits have been based on copyright law, and
not on the license agreements.

I do agree that one ought to be legally obligated to either pay
up or delete the software, but  I do not believe that the law
requires this as it stands.  There are other issues, such as
estoppel - if you do not take action to stop an infringement,
then you lose the right to sue.  Since many shareware authors
are students or casual programmers, they do not have the
means to locate pirates and take legal action, and so they
would probably lose on the estoppel argument.

I'm not a lawyer, but I hang out with one a lot.