I absolutely agree there have been some truly terrible examples of DRM implementation.
The problem with piracy is that it's so damned easy. So of course companies are going to restrict their product use in ever increasing amounts.
The biggest issue with piracy is that you don't have to be tech savvy to do it, it was alright when it was just a few isolated guys who knew how to use p2p software, or just shoved it up on their private FPS and shared it would a couple of other guys.
But now Joe Average only has to type in a search for whatever they are looking for and 9/10 it will pop up DRM stripped and ready to go.
That's because piracy like any other crime has become big business. All these sites and systems are loaded down to the gills with advertising. And a lot of it is very unsavoury advertising at that.
Joe Average just wants a bit of free software for [ insert justification here ] and in the process they support pirate websites. Simply visiting and using them is enough to validate the sites existence.
For non-site distribution, you will often find bundled keygens applications, or altered EXE's. These products are dangerous as hell, because they are often loaded down with some very dangerous keyloggers, trojans, backdoors and other nasty bits of malware. Anti-virtus companies are always playing catchup, so a few are going to sneak through even the best protection.
Piracy isn't just a threat to creators any more it's a threat to consumers as well.
With this in mind, the only real way of totally protecting your software is to generate self repairing software that refuses to run unless the server checks it to confirm it's unaltered and matches user registration.
Quote: "Now regarding piracy, im under the impression that piracy helps content producers,"
Most people are under that impression. I have a few problems with people saying that.
1) Who is it that said this first, was it the pirates themselves, or the content creators?
2) How universal is this, lets face it one rule never fits all. While you hear about the positive cases, who's reporting the negative cases. Who exactly is keeping score, and how are they doing it?
3) What is their means of data gathering? Is someone slapping out a survey and taking what people say at face value? Or is someone actively demonstrating a system by which piracy supports their product through word of mouth advertising?
4) Which industry's does this apply to? Software? Music? Books? Is it universal for all products? After all people get very excited about music, and excited about games. But what about the less interesting stuff. The more specialised niches? For example, does piracy help a C++ tutorial book? Does it help with a cooking book or a travel video? Will the people who pirated this actually have friends with the same interests or are they isolated in their interests with no one to advertise too?
Quote: "a pirate who enjoys the content will most likley recommend it to a friend, or purchase sequels to the content."
How do we prove this is actually happening in anything but isolated cases? How many things have they pirated, how much of this is being advertised by that person? Are they walking billboards for everything they downloaded? Or are they merely advertising the most popular fad at the time. What about the stuff they passed over or didn't find very interesting. How has piracy helped these groups? How many products are they actually helping to support and how many products would have benefited from them actually paying for it in the first place?
Quote: "Someone who might not have enough money might pirate the content and support the maker in some other way."
Again, word of mouth is really the only way I can think of, and my above comments apply.
Quote: "And I know that some people don't do that either, they pirate even when they can afford the content just because they are cheap or lazy."
Yes these are the guys who do the absolute most damage. I object to them the most. But I'm sure if you confronted them about it they'd be chock full of excuses and justifications. They might tell you they plan on buying it, or that they tell people about it. Or they might simply rant about the system, throw some psudeo political nonsense at you.
Quote: "But those are the kinds of people that would want to go around DRM systems anyway and no matter how secure something is, there will always be loopholes. Personaly I would not use a DRM system for any of my games, because I don't realy care if someone pirates it."
That depends on what level you are working at. Are you struggling to make a living at it? Do you have big project idea's that need funding?
Quote: "But other people might and having a DRM system that works avalible would most likley reduce the risk of something like sim city happening again. The people that want to protect their content can and we that don't realy care can just avoid using it"
Sim city is an extreme example of very badly done DRM. What about all the products with more reasonable DRM solutions? With videos you often just download a certificate, input a username and password and that's it. You can watch it as much as you want. Or a Kindle ebook, that simply locks you into the amazon kindle software platform, while at the same time giving you cloud reader, ipad apps, pc apps, linux apps, android apps, etc etc. There's not much you can't read a kindle ebook on. So why are these being downloaded, DRM ripped and distributed? Is DRM really hurting the customer there?
When people speak out against DRM they always use the worst examples possible. And I agree with you, that the company is going to far when it prevents legal paying customers from using the product. However that isn't a universal norm (yet) but if piracy continues to grow comapnies will have no choice but to do things like this.
The XBOX One is a great example of Microsofts response to piracy, in short they don't want it on their platform. So every 24 hours you need to validate your product using their servers. This limitation wouldn't exist if piracy didn't exist, and lets face it piracy existed long before such extreme solutions starting coming about. And worse still Piracy is obviously denting their profit margin enough to justify the development of such systems.
