I think you are all misreading the statement (and not because of the comma, honest)

DRM keeps honest people honest because honest people are not looking to crack DRM or pirate games.

DRM does absolutely nothing to protect against crackers and pirates except maybe delay them for a week or so after release.

So the original statement should be read:

DRM keeps honest people honest (adding a lot of inconvenience, and has absolutely no impact on dishonest people)

If only restrictive measures keep honest people honest, they're not honest.

I keep cracking my DRM infected games for decades now, before that I cracked my games with CD copy protection.

But by now I own almost 4 times as many games on GOG and other DRM free platforms than I do on Steam, so it's hardly necessary anymore.

If one wants to copy games, he can do it - no matter if a game is protected or not.
When a game is available DRM free, it's hardly worth the trouble.

@mechmouse That I can confirm. There are only a few GOG games available on pirate sites. Even the Witcher 3 was available as cracked Steam version, even if the DRM free GOG version was around from the beginning.

For almost all big corporations, the answer is yes, since video game companies want all of the money, or at least as much as possible. In their minds, it would cost them less to implement DRM than sustain any losses in sales due to piracy from some segment of their customer base. Customer ownership rights are something they simply don't care about, unless they can spin it to generate positive PR or customer good will for them or their product.

Also, with certain academic, industrial or production software, customers just have to swallow the DRM regardless of how much they're inconvenienced because they simply have no other choice. With games and general consumer software, corporations can market DRM as an added-value feature (like the percieved convenience of Office 365, Steam or GOG Galaxy) so the entire customer base doesn't feel like they're screwed at all – and likely will even want to get screwed over by DRM.

I was an honest person who did indeed buy the software, but I will tell you that a text file containing a variety of valid Windows 98 keys was quite the timesaver.

Course you know what else keeps people honest? Open code. Liberty. The freedom to modify.
Yeah, no. Do you really think I wanted to insert a CD every time I wanted to play Roller Coaster Tycoon? I bought the game from a store, I have it now, I don't want to risk the media getting damaged not because I see it as a collectable item, but because I might want to install it on another computer. Optical drives are terrible about wear and tear.

The internet; the cause and solution to everyone's problems.

Almost makes me miss my VCR.

For the record what I'm talking about here was not actually a game but an application that I use.

Private users either copy all their stuff or buy what they need, you can't do much against that.
In my case I see what I can get for free (most of all LibreOffice) and pay for what I think it's worth (WinRAR, UltraISO, ACDSee, CorelPaint, Photoshop Elements, PowerDVD, several video tools). All of these could be easily cracked, but my opinion is, that if something is worth using, it usually is also worth buying - especially if someone wants to make money by using it.
I don't think that I have a single pirated application (utility / tool) on my computer, with one exception maybe, depending on ones interpretation.
There was actually one video tool that I wanted to buy, but then they switched to a subscription model and removed important features from the 'free' version. It also had a auto update integrated, forcing that change. So I installed the free version, blocked it in the firewall, so it would not update and use that function from the free version until today :)

However, DRM is a necessary evil when it comes to companies. Our customers would try anything to not have to buy another licence. They would buy one and then have 30 people work with the software.
Or they want to use their laptop at home too - which is understandeable and can be done by releasing licences - but then complain that the program won't work in the company at the same time.

Microsoft Office is much more userfriendly, things that are very easy in MS Office are often much more difficult in LibreOffice.

I personally would gladly pay for that convenience... but I don't, not anymore.
I could even accept some activation code as a form of DRM, but when they started doing their stupid subscription models, I went over to LibreOffice.

Even though some parts of LibreOffice are annoying, at least they are not trying to rip me off continuously.

LibreOffice has made some improvements over the years; you can even set the toolbars now to imitate various office products. The main snag of LibreOffice and the now Oracle owned OpenOffice is that quite simply, the two were based on the StarOffice.

Thing is, I simply don't need a whole dang office suite, so I'm fine with Mousepad, Calligra, or even Focus Writer.

I don't think that's the case at all. MS Office is just what you are used to use. Once who changes from MS Office to Libre Office has to learn a few new things, that is true. But the other way around it's just the same.
I worked with different Office versions over time, starting back in the days on OS/2, before most people would use MS Office. It's only a question of what you are used to.

Yeah, that's a real bummer and one of the reason we replaced it in out company.
In our company we got rid of all Microsoft software and replaced it with a different business solution, which also comes with Spreadsheet and document editors. We also got rid of most of our servers (except some test servers), it's all stored in the cloud now. We don't need a VPN anymore, everyone can access anything from anywhere, no matter if it's Australia, Germany or the UE.
Sure, people had to get used to it. People are just lazy. Even before the big change they used Excel lists for Newsletter instead of Navision. Now not much paper is used anymore, contracts are done digitally mostly.

The only MS software on my laptop is MS Access, since some customers are still using systems with old databases, but we push them towards modern solutions. Even MS wanted to get rid of Access a long time ago, but it's been used in so many softwares that they still need to offer ADO drivers for it.

It's still possible to get "lifetime" licences. My sis works in a Kindergarten and was able to get it with a teacher licence.

That is true, but often open source software has a lot to learn about userfriendliness.

For instance, the location of Σ button in Excel is nearly perfect, but it is in a very annoying place in LibreOffice.
A very small, but significant thing if you need to use that button a lot.
Supposedly there can be some ways to modify the user interface, but I haven't done that.

Not related to LibreOffice, but GIMP is another software where there are some design choices that are simply meant to annoy people.
I mean, if you want to save to a different file format, why is it too much to ask to have that under "Save as". Of course you eventually learn that it's done from "Export as", but that's certainly not the easiest way to do it, and it makes one wonder what possible evil could happen if "Save as" would be able to save as PNG or whatever.


Interesting.
Not my experience at all.

Previously I did some computer teaching, and was able to buy some Microsoft licences for discounted prices.
I ordered two keys for two different OS versions... and they cancelled the order!
Apparently one person can't have more than one discounted licence for work purposes. Now, in the end I was able to get both of them, because I made the irrefutable argument: how am I supposed to teach people how to work with all these versions, if I don't have access to them?

So they reluctantly sent me both of those, but that's not as flexible as it used to be.
Back when I was using student licences, it was very flexible. Of course the whole pricing logic and business model has changed.

Well, that I can understand. She didn't try to get multiple licences anyway, just one for herself.

I know some people who put the interface of Gimp above all others. I myself do not think so. I guess it's different ways of thinking, depending on how one approaches his system.

When I design my interfaces I remember that guy without any computer experience who kept rubbing his thumb over the colored label with the ID of the enamel on the paper form and kept saying "now that's something one can work with".
The rest of the form was completely unimportant to him, but that label in the right color ... like a wet dream come true.

I think mostly in the open source world you find programs that were not made for the dumbest of users, but for people who think like the developers. They make programs for themselves, not for the people who would rather pay someone to buy a complete computer system with preinstalled software rather than replacing a single component in their old one.



About "save as" ... I can understand that ist might be somewhat irritating, but I can understand why they make a distinction there:
Let's just say you say: Save as JPG.
That means that you lose a lot of image informations (not talking about image compressione here, which is a whole different matter). Layers, paths, selections, transparency masks, maybe even the color space ... it's all gone. The saved file is not the same as what you currently see on the screen.
So "export as" does make sense in a certain way. In Photoshop you would "save copy as ...".