I don't think anyone here is arguing that piracy is justified, but rather that the draconian anti-piracy measures are both ultimately ineffectual and intellectually dishonest - combating piracy isn't the real motive behind them.
How many pieces of software using some form of copy protection have you ever seen that have remained uncracked? Don't bother answering that, there aren't any. DRM doesn't stop the folks who crack software at all, they only see each new type of 'protection' as another challenge to overcome, and everyone inclined to pirate things will always have a ready supply thanks to those crackers.
No, the people being stymied by DRM are the less technically adept HONEST customers who actually pay for things and then get screwed over by draconian DRM. Allow me to explain by way of several analogies.
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking about the software market in terms of retail businesses. Game companies point to MASSIVE piracy figures and bemoan how much money they lose due to piracy, etc. Based on all their caterwauling, the layman might picture a department store where the customers constantly walk away with entire shelves worth of merchandise (oh noes!) - but nothing of the sort has happened. Software isn't a physical product - there might be packaging, manuals, dvds, etc, but really what they are selling is simply DATA. Stealing a television set from Best Buy costs that store the price of the television you just stole. Stealing a pirated copy of Crysis from the interwebs? Oddly enough that costs EA ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, because you haven't taken anything tangible from them for which there is a cost associated.
While I would never attempt to justify piracy, in terms of impact towards the bottom line there is no difference between downloading an illegal copy of Crysis and walking past the game box in the store but deciding not to buy it. Neither one costs or benefits EA, ergo whenever a company trots out figures showing how many millions of dollars in losses piracy costs them in quarter X, they are essentially lying to you, as the piracy figures do not equal 'losses'. Pirated copies of games are simply UNSOLD copies of games - the difference is there is a mechanism that can quantify how many people downloaded pirated copies, while it's anyone's guess how many people thought about buying a game but decided not to, and nobody would take them seriously if they tried to show us figures about losses caused by 'indecision'.
Companies like EA claim that each pirated copy of their game would have been a sale if it hadn't been pirated. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY THIS CAN BE SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE. Whatever justification a software pirate has for their actions, they are somebody who has decided to STEAL SOFTWARE. That doing so doesn't hurt the company in question anymore than simply 'not buying it' doesn't change the fact that the individual JUSTIFIED TAKING YOUR WORK WITHOUT PAYING. How likely do you really think it is that a thief will start paying for things if only you can find a way to make it impossible for him to steal them? He's a bloody THIEF!!! So of course the notion that the piracy figures can be directly equated with a $ amount of lost revenue is laughable, and all the protections they keep inventing are easily circumvented so it's not like they can actually force those pirates into a scenario where they have no other choice but to pay for things.
So why all the clamor about DRM and how it's desperately needed thanks to 'piracy', if it doesn't actually stop piracy and pirates wouldn't have paid for your stuff even if they couldn't steal it? Simple: It's to get you, the PAYING customer, to pay for things you already own again (and again, and again), and to kill the secondary market where the publisher doesn't see a dime. Piracy is just the straw man they use to justify this to their honest customers. Not convinced? Honest customers are saddled with limited activation, and if they reach their limit of 're-installs' because they upgrade their computer or have to re-format their OS, EA will instruct them to buy another copy of the game. Pirates never have to bother activating the software in the first place, and can install THEIR copies as many times as they like. Used PC games that feature product-key based account activation? Ha ha ha! Of course that's not going to work, or if it does, you will have even less flexibility before the magic 'We're sorry, but you can't use the software you've purchased anymore' point arises.
If you wanted to give a friend your copy of a modern game, along with all the assorted materials it came with, ie 'transferring the license to another party', the odds are it would not work. How on earth can anyone honestly defend that?! If that still doesn't seem reprehensible to you, picture THIS scenario: You have just purchased a dvd, and watch it on several different players in your home, and then take it over to a friend's house to watch there, but instead of playing, this message pops up...
"We're sorry, but you have reached the maximum amount of activations for this disk. Please purchase a new copy for playback on this device."
If you are a rational human being then this would make you justifiably angry, as that's a load of crap, and that's the reason for all the hate directed at the DRM companies keep foisting upon us - at it's core, DRM is a way to lock legitimate users out of the things they purchased. The 'very best' varieties are essentially unobtrusive minor annoyances like disc checks for games that don't actually need to use the dvd for anything, but anymore those aren't even what people are talking about when they say "DRM", as the term when applied to gaming almost always refers to the travesties companies like EA foist upon us. It's important to bear in mind that Electronic Arts thought a system that required online activation to install, would phone home every week and if it didn't re-verify that you hadn't somehow 'stolen' the legitimately purchased title (you already activated!) after 10 day it would simply lock you out of your software entirely... was a GOOD IDEA. The only reason they didn't implement that system was the subsequent massive outcry of negative customer feedback those announcements generated, and it says a lot when the current "we'll only lock you out when you install it X amount of times" approach is a BETTER one.
Thanks to pointless attempts to combat piracy, I have had to 'break into' several games I legitimately purchased because their copy protection mechanisms broke the game, and this was back in the day where copy protection wasn't actively breaking things as an advertised feature. Piracy is an industry problem to be sure, but the notion that you can prevent it using DRM is laughable, and the attempts to do so only end up hurting the paying customers. As much as companies would love it if everyone who wanted to use their products had to buy their own personal copy that would only work for them, they really need to understand that it's a pipedream they shouldn't try to make come true, because implementing that 'vision' means treating your customers like thieves, while the actual thieves laugh at you and steal it anyways.
