There is clearly a lack of understanding of piracy. For a while, I used to download music. I did not like paying $20 for an album when I often wanted only 2 or 3 songs so I would download the 2 or 3 songs. I don't bother looking for pirated music anymore because now I can buy those songs individually.

DRM does not work. Plain and simple. Here's what happens - game arrives with DRM, DRM gets hacked off, pirates enjoy playing the game DRM free while the real consumers have to hassle with DRM the whole time.

How many people that pirate games would buy them if they couldn't pirate them? I wouldn't. Digital copies are here to stay. For every professional cryptographer out there, there are 10 pirates with same or better knowledge.

The technology has already changed. We are all just chuckling while we wait for companies to figure it out and change their business models.

Granted you need an internet connection and the ability to burn DVDs (which everyone has), but you just download the cracked game, burn it to disc, and play it on your PS or Xbox. So there a few extra steps. Big deal.

"[Electronic Arts] needs DRM to prevent the casual pirate." Are you kidding? Simple physical media checks accomplished this. The idea of burning a hole into a disk sector first surfaced in the 1980's I believe.

The fact is, Electronic Art's DRM is a new renting model. It's designed to break. It's designed to be exhausted. In five years, when the value packs start hitting shelves, they'll sell better than usual. Go figure.

The gaming industry needs to stop maximizing profits by cutting the same exact purchase 10 different ways. That's a staple of the porn industry or the illegal drug trade, not games for kids and teens. It's just pathetic.

But Lotus 1-2-3 used to come with a key disk. Lotus argued that removing copy protection that required the key disk floppy to be in the drive when running the program was necessary to prevent piracy.

Of course, there were plenty of programs designed to dupe the key disk and crack the primitive copy-protection they'd put on the disks and 1-2-3 went the way of the do-do.

No business would even look at a piece of software like that today. The game market will develop similarly.

I think you're dead wrong here on the whole "the actions of users in pirating Spore has proved EA's point" tack.

I think there's plenty of evidence out there that the kind of pernicious DRM that EA spawned with the Spore release actually attracts the attention of crackers and makes it more likely that great effort will be exerted to *break* the DRM. Moreover, even for the greater community of users who don't have the skills to crack the system, the presence of DRM that they feels denies them proper ability to use something they've purchased makes them feel more justified in participating in the piracy, either passively or actively.

Had Spore come out with a conventional non-DRM or "insert the disk to play" distribution (which people are pretty comfortable circumventing for their own flexibility) they would likely have seen much less immediate piracy (and much higher Amazon ratings). Augmenting the standalone game with opt-in, pay for play, internet gaming modes would have expanded their income and reach without either alienating their user base or encouraging pirates.

Only a far too simplistic conception of most problems would require a 100% effective response.

Seat belts do not prevent all deaths in case of car accidents. And yet, they still save lives.

Stopping smoking is not assured to keep you from getting lung cancer, emphasema or developing other problems. But it is still worth doing.

The question has never ever been whether DRM will prevent all piracy/illegal copying/illegal use. On the kneejerk DRM foes and those they have duped fall for that standard.

The question is whether DRM stems the problem enough to allow content creators to earn enough to make it worth their while. Yes, the aspirational goal is 100%, the the requirement is much lower than that.

With this in mind, we look at DRM quite a bit differently. The question changes from "Does DRM work?" to "Does DRM work well enough?" Or even "In what circumstances that does particular DRM scheme work well enough?"

If your potential market is hard core game players and others who are more likely to use bit torrent and its ilk, then current DRM schemes might not work enough. But if your target market is different, it might.

Perhaps Machinist could gaddress these sorts of issues, rather than just repeat the most simplistic views on the topic. Perhaps what sorts of DRMs gamers respect, and why? Perhaps whether hard cord gamers will ever accept DRM that they can easily circumvent?

Surprised you didn't go for supporting info using Crysis, another EA title that's made some minor headlines in the last year for its DRM issues--and nothing like this invasive Spore madness, but rather the fact that despite the DRM, there were something like 80% of the people playing it not having a valid serial number, presumably pirated copies.

Whether this is factually true or not or how they arrived at that figure, dunno. But it too did not bode well for future PC game development, when Crysis did so-so at the market but supposedly would have done well if all those playing it had actually paid for it.