hornet3d posted at 2:54PM Fri, 27 November 2015 - #4241223

I hope SM make enough pirates pay for a legal copy to make up for those loyal users that are not updating, somehow I doubt they will.

There are some very smart people with big stakes riding on being right that think DRM just encourages piracy. Personally, my opinion (and it's certainly not an original one) is that piracy only begins to matter if the people that pirate might have been legitimate customers in the first place. Most people that want your product and have the money to buy it will buy it, imo, and if they don't have the money for it they were never legitimate prospective customers in the first place. Thus, them stealing it (and let's be honest, that's what piracy is, whether pirates admit it or not) doesn't actually matter since it represents no loss for the seller. In that narrow instance, theft of non-tangible goods like software or content by people that did not represent actual demand (the economics term meaning both desire to have a thing and the ability to pay for it) is a victimless theft.

All that said, I am not advocating piracy. I am spelling out the reasons that I think DRM is just wrong-headed, especially intrusive and onerous DRM. Honestly though, is there really another kind?