If you want publishers to respect the proper rights of developers, how's about you respect them first by not pirating brand-new stuff?
I got no beef with people who obtain and play games that are essentially "out of print". You could even make a case that copyright law needs to be rewritten to take into account such "abandonware". Are anyone's interests served by making it illegal to distribute for free stuff that nobody wants to buy? If it's *no longer possible* to buy a *new* copy of a book, record, video game, then who is harmed by people photocopying their old version and distributing it free? The owner has basically declared that their expected return no longer justifies continued investment in the property. Whoever is now distributing the work has made an investment without expectation of return. Shouldn't their investment be respected and entitle them, if not to collect money, at least to proceed without being harassed?
Heck, you could even go so far as to say that the distributor of such "reclaimedware" could legitimately be entitled to collect money--for the use of their service, if not for the IP itself. Maybe make it so they'd have to pay a certain legally-mandated, non-negotiable percentage of revenue in royalties to whoever owns the IP until it would normally enter the public domain. Then, if they don't and the owner finds out about this publishing, you have a VERY simple situation that's VERY easily resolved: the amount of money owing is VERY easily calculated and won't require years of litigation and stupid waste. And then you can very easily append a provision that if someone is distributing but not paying, THEN the owner has a legitimate right to demand that it be taken down.
In essence, you'd be inserting a third phase of copyright status in between "copyrighted" and "public domain", during which everyone exercises their rights in relation to their action toward that IP. If the owner throws it in the dumpster and moves on, the bum who comes along, tidies it up a bit, and makes some use of it isn't a criminal.