Posted May 01, 2015
Aturuxo: I wish the big companies realized that all their DRM crap and other bs, if anything, only serve to encourage piracy.
And vice versa. ---
Speaking generally now:
The problem is that the customer base, by pirating, is giving up whatever moral high ground might exist in the issue, and thus the publishers are given ammunition for every time the DRM argument comes up. So when we - the collective customer-base "we" - say that we pirate (steal) because they put in DRM theft prevention measures (which are legal), "we" are weakening our own cause. It doesn't matter whether or not they lose a single penny over it (the whole "lost sales" argument). What matters is that we continue to take the stuff for free. That will be their rallying cry until people simply stop stealing the products.
I don't give a crap about the "it isn't stealing because it's not a physical product!" argument, because it doesn't matter. What matters is that we acquire through dubious means stuff that has been assigned a price and thus - arguments to the contrary - someone is arbitrarily getting something for nothing, a something that other people are paying for.
And that's why piracy to avoid DRM is bullshit. It doesn't help the DRM-free cause; to the contrary, it hurts it. It may make those pirating the products feel better about it because they as individuals chose to get around the matter (Theft, yeah! That'll show 'em!), but it screws over the rest of us just a little bit every time as piracy is one of the reasons DRM exists.
That's not how we build the trust that is necessary in order for companies to change their stance on DRM. Someone has to take the high road. If it's not the publishers and it's not the customer base, then this isn't going to change.