The Great Debate

Read an article earlier about copy protection and the argument for it. I tend to be extremely opposed to it in all forms, but it was interesting to see the other side present some decent evidence. Still, the conclusions the article reaches are all opinions based on the numbers, which ultimately mean nothing.

What I don't understand is why demonizing copy protection is a bad thing. If enough people get upset about it, they will have to change things. The Wikipedia entry for SecureRom, one particularly nasty form of DRM, has been edited ad nauseam, and one only need look at the incident with Spore on Amazon.com in the comments section to see the power of the internet rumor mill at work. If only people were so vehement about protecting constitutional rights and keeping our country out of the hands of greedy politicians.

And, regardless of how many actual pirates copy protection is stopping, if even one legitimate customer is negatively affected by it, it has utterly failed at its job.

Imagine if American car makers decided to require several redundancy checks every time you started your car. If you had to wait for authenticaion transmitted from your car key up to an activation server which would then be beamed back so that you could open the door. Then, when you started the car, you would have to wait again while it checked to make sure you were not a vagrant. You paid for the car, right? So you should be able to unlock it.

Well, this logic works for physical goods, because you cannot copy them like electronic media. The argument could also be made, however, that once you buy an apple from a store, you have the seeds that apple provides in order to plant new trees. No one could tell you you can't plant those apple trees, because they're your seeds, right? But that isn't how electronic media works. How do you assign something value if it can be copied infinitely and shared for free? Rather than go the other direction, and provide customer incentives and better service, companies have decided that Copy protection, or DRM (Digital Rights Management) is the answer.

Copy protection, in theory, is a great thing. But the regular software buyers who are affected most by it are not the ones they're trying to stop. They're trying hardest to get rid of the casual pirates. Because they have to know that no matter what, the game will end up cracked and leaked only a few days after release (and sometimes, weeks before).

So they've entered a very strange middle ground. On one side, you have the hardcore who know what ISOs and torrents are, and know where to get any game or program they want. On the other, you have the average consumer who buys software from the store and expects that he will always be able to access that software whenever he wants. These two groups should not overlap, but the people in charge of these decisions see the overlap as this hulking thing. They believe there is this enormous, magical number of software pirates out there simply waiting for them to release a new game so that they can pilfer it and share it with all their pirate buddies.

The truth is far more simple: there are software pirates, there are casual software pirates, and there are regular people who buy software. There are people who will always pirate software, because it can never be fully protected without serial keys and online verifications. Even then, the smart crackers can get in and make it free. So they accept that there is this lost sales demographic and move on to the next level up.

What about those people who don't know much about computers but who don't like to or can't pay for software? In other words, the poor college student. Maybe a friend explains the process to him and he tries it out by downloading Crysis. He wouldn't have bought Crysis, because his computer can't run it anyway, but since it's free, he decides to give it a shot. When it doesn't work, he deletes it and gives up, because he perceives that the process is too difficult.

I'm of the opinion that the majority of piracy is in that category. Sure, there are the hardcore, but they've always been there.

Then, there's the regular consumer. The one who paid for the software. The one who has to put up with calling tech support because the online verification servers aren't responding. Or put up with getting a new license for the program because his computer got a virus and he had to reinstall windows. This is the largest majority of consumers.

Most people do not pirate software, not because they lack the desire, but because they do not know how. The reason the music industry is having trouble is because of the trend Napster started all those years ago. Napster made sharing music easy. In fact, it made it so easy, the music industry has never recovered. And when it fell, it was inevitable that other programs would pop up to take its place.

The point boils down to this: All of these businesses, music industry included, must find new ways to get people to pay for their products. The current business model is a thing of the past, and sticking to draconian DRM because you believe piracy is the sole cause of a game's shitty sales record, is quite simply, lunacy.

Hey executives, how about this? Why not make games that people want to play? Why not give them incentives, like great, free online play which requires a one-time use CD key (Battle.net), or free game add-ons (Epic) to keep them coming back? Treat your customers like what they are: your bottom line. Because without them, you would be nothing. Your hulking corporation would be a bunch of guys in a building pushing paper into the land of dreams. It's our money, and we want to choose how we spend it. We don't want to spend it on games with two hours of content. We don't want to spend it on games that aren't fun to play. And we especially don't want to spend it on games that you might not even let us play.