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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Asmor" data-source="post: 1586293" data-attributes="member: 1154">No, on principle if nothing else.The only thing DRM serves is inconveniencing legitimate customers. Let's look at some past methods of copy protection in software...Dongles: Software will only run if a little tiny thing is plugged into your parallel port or something similar. Easily lost by legitimate customers, easily cracked by pirates.Codes: Software prompts you for codes found in the instruction booklet. Frequently lost by legitimate customers, easily cracked by pirates or they include a text file with all the codes with their distribution.CD-presence: CD must be detected in CD-rom drive or game will not run. Causes a hassle for legitimate customers who have to frequently swap CDs for no reason other than proving that they bought the game. Pirates, again, easily crack this. Frequently, legitimate customers crack this as well since it's so annoying, and in so doing expose themselves to the vulnerabilities inherent in downloading executables from sites which are by their very nature less-than-reputable.Cd-keys: Software prompts you for a cd-key before installation. Similar to codes, but capable of uniquely identifying an install. Legitimate customers, again, often lose cd-keys. Effective at keeping pirates from playing on centralized online serves, but otherwise no more effective than any other method.What's the lesson here? The only people who are at all inconvenienced by any form of copy protection are legitimate customers. Anything-- ANYTHING-- can be cracked, and often quite easily. Even more difficult things are only difficult at first and quickly become routine. The Xbox, for example, took a long time to be cracked, but now is easily modified with a reasily available ~$50 chip requiring no solder or electronics skills, allowing users to install a 120 gigabyte hard drive and install and run unsigned code. Ironically, this has proven a massive boon to Xbox owners who bother to do this, as the Xbox is quite frankly an incredible machine with entirely legitimate uses for any user once you install some homebrew software. I've got an easily portable media center with a 120 gigabyte hard drive that I can plug into any TV and play literally any form of media, from proprietary formats like .rm, .qt and .wmv to cutting edge freely available codecs like ogg and XviD. On top of that, I can copy the games I own to the hard drive and with the assistance of a standard feature known as in-game reset, I can change games without leaving my couch.So here are the two options copyright holders are faced with...Not use DRM, build a loyal base of customers, soak up the greatly-overstated effects of piracy by charging more to your customers.Use DRM, costing you more for development, licensing, etc, inconveniencing and alienating legitimate customers and providing a quite frankly incomplete product, and still suffer from piracy.</blockquote>

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