And strangely all this threads are started from pirates :D

I wish some pirates would be caught and punished, but tagging a download would just end up punishing other people. Surely a tag could be altered.

What I hate about the punishment of pirates is that the punishment doesn't feel like it fits the crime. I understand that a pirate gives away $10,000,000 worth of property, but the only reason people are downloading it is b/c they won't buy it. I don't know anybody who eagerly anticipates the release of a game and then steals it. They tend to just steal games to try them out. Some buy later, some don't. But my point is that although $10,000,000 was given away, some 15-year-old with too much time and too little parental monitoring can not nor should not pay 10 million bucks.

If the punishment was 200 hours of community service to repay the community, I'd love the pirates to get caught and charged in any way possible*. But 15 years in prison or whatever they give them seems a bit steep. And since your chances of being caught is almost nil, people don't consider the punishment as a dissuading factor. Punish less, catch more, and maybe some local pirates might quit. But I doubt it. :-)

*edit: I reread this and "any way possible" is not what I meant. I mean that law enforcement could track some IPs, investigate, etc to stop the criminals. Not by adding DRM or tags and junk to track potentially not-the-real-pirates, etc. Basically, I think the consumer should not be able to notice the activity in the least.

Evil cannot comprehend good. They'd probably find such displays of altruism repulsive... or, you know, incomprehensible ;P.

I do disagree with the "It's simple... We, uh, ignore the Batman" approach people suggest though. I also disagree with those who suggest that pirates pirate and therefore the situation is hopeless. People pirate and we can them pirates because of that, not the other way around. I believe they may stop, learn, change their ways.

I don't think it's so much a 'ignore it and it will go away' attitude. Rather, it's a 'there's nothing you, as an individual, can do about these guys pirating GOG games'. And GOG is well aware that this is going on. Let them worry about it if it bothers them.

Pirates are pathetic.

Legal gamers/users FTW!!!! ^_^

I always hope that someone has added Malicious Code to those torrents when I think of Pirate Bay & other sites like that...

A bunch of morons who think it's ok to "digitally shoplift" deserve to have computers full of viruses.

Piracy is bad. People will do it because they see it as victimless. It's probably closer to victimless with GOG games since they are so old, but it's still bad. People do bad things, that's humanity for ya.

Oh well.

Could you send me a link in PM? I couldn't find a torrent with entire collection.

If only. Don't forget about the pirates who see THEMSELVES as victims ;P.

That's like half of PC gamers right there.

Villain!!!

I don't intend to be mean, but this is hardly news. Games get pirated.

Watermarking isn't really worth it, watermarks aren't that hard to remove from my understanding. Certainly no harder to remove than DRM is.

Pirates...

You guys keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Language evolves. Despite the fact that it didn't originally mean downloading copyrighted material or violating copyright, it does now have that meaning.

But I do love the movie reference. Inconceivable!

@OP:

Suggesting some sort of software water marking of GOG installers is akin to a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche:

"When fighting monsters, be careful not to become one".