My daughter saved her money to buy this game, we loaded it and cannot play it, getting a disk authentication failure.

Sweet. Checked the EA Sims 3 forum,
LOTS of people with the same problem.
What's distrurbing, many of these people claim to be buying a
second copy of the game, either from a store or a digital download, in a frantic effort to get their Sims fix. I hate to see a company rewarded with increased sales due to a showstopper like this.