This is real by the way. I'm having a debate with someone on another website about the usage of DRM in software and this is what he said. I don't want people going after this guy so I won't say where it's from, but this has to be one of the most impressively stupid I things I've ever read on the internet.

How about you?

If you've heard any nonsense defending DRM worse than this; and if so should we even know about it? :O

https://xkcd.com/386/

He's probably right that DRM helps prevent SOME cases of casual pirated copies (and if some vendors want to pass a small surcharge on DRM-free copies to offset this, I don't have a problem with it personally).

However, here's the thing: With drm-free, the vendor will be short-changed on SOME sales. With drm, EVERY customer will be short-changed on their ownership rights for something they BOUGHT.

So, really, it's a question of balance. Are you really willing to scr*w over the ENTIRETY of your customer base to prevent SOME theft?

This is like crossing someone in a deserted street at 1 am and saying: "You know what, there is a very small chance that he is a psycho and he will attack me, so I won't take any chance and I will shoot him right now". Good luck selling that as a reasonable argument to a court of law.

DRM keeps honest folk under control, subjugated, penalized ... though many are not wise enough to understand that or don't pay enough attention.

Basically we have DRM, because of a few bad folk, and because some creators or providers cannot tolerate that someone is getting their product for free, no money paid to them. Of course they build the whole piracy thing up bigger than Ben Hur, and some even believe in it despite all the logical reasons not to.

All DRM really does is give grief to those who actually matter. The truly bad folk will always find a way around it, and because now you have pissed off many of the mostly good folk, they too will take advantage of piracy.

Far better to have a world built on trust and support that, without being dumb about it where some countries etc are concerned. Not much you can do about that anyway. Most people are good and do the right thing. We should not let truly bad folk impact us like they so often do, because we give them too much of our fear etc.

DRM-Free actually works and has been proved time and time again. The gaming industry hasn't collapsed because of GOG and the many years they have been providing DRM-Free games. Neither has the music industry in all the decades it has been going. Same for Movies and TV Shows, where ironically, just as for a lot of music now, the creators and providers are getting less via streaming subscriptions. The best you can say about streaming subscriptions, is a certain guaranteed level of profit, which in all reality is less overall than the buy a product model, but hey the world has changed and they have to go along with it, even though the logic says all their prior complaints about the impact of piracy are meaningless, certainly in the modern light.

"y u want 2 buy GOG version? ur a pirate!" - Steam Forum response to a request that the developer consider selling their game on GOG. (It's literally the number one thing that causes me to chuckle when people complain how 'bad' the GOG forums are...)

Not a pirate, but a privateer of the best kind: one who "robs" developers and publishers by paying premiums for DRM-free copies to enjoy in the comfort of one's treasure cave! Arrrrr! :P DRM in a game you pay for is akin to a fuse. You don't know how long you've got until it blows, taking the thing you paid for with it. DRM-free games, with proper backups in place, are what one may start calling true ownership of copies.

Truly honest people are already honest because of how they grew up. They keep themselves honest and don't need to be kept honest by anyone or anything else. How do you tell if someone's truly honest? I couldn't tell you that.

The virtous man needs no rules.
The evil one will always find a loophole to exploit them.

It is wrongly worded, but there is some truth to that.

Really honest people are always honest, and at least attempt to do the right thing.
Pirates on the other hand, are even inspired by DRM, because there has always been some competition about who is going to crack some game fastest or make the most stable crack.

But then there are a number of people who are honestly buying their games, but don't mind making copies to their friend either for free, or for some small pocket money. These can be the kind of people who think it's wrong to download a pirate copy, but don't see anything wrong with copying the same game from their friends.

And the last mentioned group is such that can be controlled with DRM.
Is it big enough a group to justify DRM? Some say yes, some say no, there's no undisputed data about that.

It's because of those people in any case, that some games which are released DRM-free are not released DRM-free on launch.

Now, back to the original statement.
I think it's wrong because if people are accepting copied games from their friends, probably knowing that it's not really legal, then those people aren't 100% honest to begin with, and DRM doesn't keep them honest.

It should be worded:
"DRM is helpful in some cases to prevent casual game piracy."

The best dumb DRM Defence I've had

"Torrent sites are mostly GoG games"

So I looked at the most popular site, top 200 torrents by seed, 50 torrents per page, 1 GOG game (Spore) right at the bottom of the 1st page, a total of 12 torrents over the 200 entries, 8 of which were lower ranked duplicates of Steam versions.

So I told the guy this, and his reply

"You're doing it wrong, you need to search for 'GOG', otherwise it doesn't work."

If you require DRM to remain honest, then you were never an honest person.

So true. Honesty must come from within. There shouldn't be a need for others to enforce it to us!

That is a great analogy!

This reminds me of the problem in Japan is with pirating Visual Novels.
From my research, while DRM may safe some sellings, it mostly the attitude that detirms if it get illegal downloaded.
Another example russia. Russia whas infamous for illegal downloading games which made Gabe originally not wanting to bring Steam to them. But once he did the illegal downloads got reduced and games where sold plenty. So problem is not downloads or not but if people want to take on the offer or not.
People that do not want to pay will always crack it DRM or not. People that will buy it, will always buy it. DRM is in the end only hurting the people whose money they will get anyway.