EricByers.com

We're all somewhat accustomed to DRM (Digital Rights Management) in our daily lives. iTunes is now the number one source of music in the US (which uses it's FairPlay DRM on most of the tracks it sells), DVD's are not as easy (or legal) to copy, there are restrictions in recording broadcasts, and the list goes on.

DRM is positioned as something to help the company, unfortunately it usually only provides downsides to the consumer. In some cases it causes an extreme backlash. If you check the reviews for Electronic Art's newest game Spore on Amazon you'll see they are sitting at 1 star. The reason? DRM.

EA decided to try and stave off piracy for their newest game by adding a few restrictions. They enlisted the help of SecuRom, which installs additional software on your computer (that isn't removed on uninstall of the game), and allows to install the game only three times. Three times doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but if you reformat or get a new computer just two additional times, you're at the end of your limit. Sure you can call up customer service and try to explain what went on, and maybe they'll give you another install, but the point is that you shouldn't have to, you purchased the game. To make matters worse the DRM protection was cracked and the game was pirated before the official copy even hit shelves. This means this measure of DRM is only going to annoy their customers.

I understand where EA is coming from, where the RIAA/MPAA are coming from. But instead of giving people a reason to buy their products, they've given them a reason to turn away from them, ironically the reason behind including the DRM in the first place. iTunes is another example of this (although it's required of them to use DRM by the RIAA currently), since I can only play music purchased from iTunes in Apple software/products, it prevents me from using it on my PS3, on any other music player, etc. If I would have pirated this music I would be free to use this. It's hard enough to get people to purchase things, why make it harder.

Not everyone is this backwards thankfully, one developer asked the pirates why they steal and did a very nice write-up of it. I want to purchase these things, just please don't make it harder (although props to EA for coming out with a Mac version at the same time as a PC version). For the record (for those of you who think I'm a huge pirate) I purchase all of my software/games/music.