The gawd-almighty merged DRM in Silent Hunter V thread

[Skullcowboy]

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

Frankly, the "you'll never stop piracy!" tone of many dissidents makes me wonder what their true motivation for wanting DRM gone might be. "I won't buy the game while it has DRM" - probably true, but would you buy it, as in pay for it, if it didn't? Remember, as I've said several times, there's one very good way to stop the industry from using prohibitive anti-piracy measures. Stop pirating games.

This is one of the things the upsets me THE MOST. If you have no problem being treated like a pirate out of the gate, good for you. By all means buy the game and I won't badmouth you a bit. But please don't insult me with insinuations that because I am standing up for something that I must just want to pirate games.

I have paid for every single PC game I have ever owned. I think piracy is wrong. But only a little Googling will show that DRM does more to inconvenience paying customers than it does to stop piracy or even slow it down. Several of the most heavily DRM laden games were on the torrent sites BEFORE THEY WERE EVEN RELEASED. So yes, I get a little PO'd when I am treated with suspicion and my ability to enjoy what I have legitimately purchased is hindered by something that really is ineffective at what it is 'supposed' to do.

I am not a pirate. I am a customer. Pirates don't buy games, customers do. Stop treating me like a pirate.

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

No, I can't, because us readers don't steal books at a rate of 9:10. If, for every tenth book that was sold in a book store, nine books were shoplifted, you could bet your butt that the book store industry would go to drastic lengths to restrict your ability to shoplift books.

Piracy is copyright infringement, not theft. There are volumes of laws written to cover copyright infringement and that is what you are charged with if you are caught doing it, not theft. Theft involves the loss of a tangible good, copyright infringement does not. So stealing physical books has no connection with pirating a game. A stolen book cannot be sold by the original owner. The original of a copied game can still be sold to someone else who might buy it.

But limiting my ability to use a product I have legitimately purchased because you think I might pirate it? If you think that is okay and want to equate copyright infringement with theft (and I'll play along for just a sec) how about this.

Would you be okay with having a police officer assigned to you who goes everywhere and never lets you out of his sight because, you know, you MIGHT steal or perform some other unlawful act? It's the latest service offered. It will enhance your life experience, too. Oh, and you get to pay them to do this.