Agreed. Though my most immediate problem lies with the technical implementation stopping me from doing what both local laws the EULA allows me to (the latter of which has little if any legal relevance).

And the fact that this is possible is why GOG is DRM. As it is, it is impossible to destroy your copies as they are toed to an account, no using the account is not a requirement to play or install already downloaded games, but it is a requirement to not be able to access a program you've sold.

Also, this is no more trust than a company gives you if they release a game DRM free on disc.
No, it is only DRM if it restricts something that you have the legal right to do. the right to resale is a legal right, the right to make copies of software is a legal right, the right to be able to use your software unimpeded is a legal right. If there was a program that somehow prevented illegal sales without infringing on any rights granted by law, it wouldn't be DRM.

You're using words in a peculiar way. I suggest you introduce a new term, like "Rights Limitation Devices", "RLD" and then proceed to claim "GOG is RLD", "If DRM (as understood by others) worked such-and-such I wouldn't consider it RLD". You might even make a distinction between RLD and "Software/Hardware Copy-creation Preventing Mechanisms", "SHCCP" and using the latter to describe what everyone else here calls "DRM".
Suddenly - everyone will agree with you, but your statements will be overtly uninteresting, instead of implicitly irrelevant, as they are currently.

Of course it is. If I want to play a game I buy today in 10-15 years, a technical restriction (=DRM) may well make it impossible for me to play the game even on the same system it was bought for, e.g. if it requires connection to an authentication server that does not exist anymore. A legal restriction will not, especially if the publisher/rights owner has gone bankrupt long time ago.

I have lots of 10-15 years old PC games that I still intend to play. If any of them required any online authentication now, I'd be pissed off. The closest case was Dune 2000 where I tried to update the game with the ingame "online update". Of course it didn't work, Westwood's update server hasn't probably been running for many many years. Fortunately I found an offline patch for the game.

Wrong. No matter how many times you claim otherwise, DRM simply means technical restrictions on how you can use a piece of software, music or movie, no matter whether your intentions are legal or not. Especially considering that something that is legal in one country may be illegal in another country, yet the DRM system stays the same.

Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

By the very definition of DRM, yes it would be. It is not even clear which country's laws you are referring to (my bet: Canada?), which makes it senseless to talk about the legal rights when discussing about DRM. The same system is called DRM in one country, but not another?

Yes, if there was some system that didn't infringe on any legal rights, it wouldn't be DRM. However, as far as I'm aware such a system doesn't exist.

"It can also refer to restrictions associated with specific instances of digital works or devices"

This is what I'm talking about with GOG, not allowing one to delete the games from their own account at their leisure is DRM. As it infringes on the legal right to resell.
I'd argue that the two terms are synonyms, except a rights limitation device need not only apply to digital works.

In other words, DRM would fall under the category of an RLD, but RLD could also apply to non-digital goods.

Digital Rights Management, the restriction (management) of legal rights, as pertaining to digital goods.

Rights Limitation Device, any device which limits the legal rights of an individual, pertaining to all goods and services.

Nice strawman. Nowhere did I say that legal issues don't matter at all, but I still prefer to play the game I've bought, even if in some country by some twisted EULA it was considered illegal. I think that is a rather theoretical situation anyway.

Either way, please stop misusing the term "DRM", when discussing about legal restrictions. For all 10-15 years old games I have, to the latest patch levels? I don't think so. Then there is also the matter of trust, ie. whether I trust that cracked binaries etc. don't have embedded trojans in them. No thanks, I'd rather just trust the original version.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "circumventing legal restrictions", can you give some real life examples about playing PC games, when there are no technical restrictions (DRM) in place to enforce those legal restrictions? Some forms of DRM have e.g. only limited number of installations, but that included DRM that enforced it.

For the rest of your message, that is useless semantics about how we should change the term "DRM" to something else. There are always some legal restrictions on how you can use a game you have bought, you never have full rights to it, like making copies of it and selling the copies to everyone. Such legal restriction still does not mean that such game automatically contains "DRM".

That is still not how DRM is defined. You have defined a new term that is not DRM.

It is not DRM, because there are no technical restrictions for you to sell the game.

If you have the legal issue that you must be able to delete your own copy of the game before you can sell it, that refers to the local copies on your hard disk (ie. in your possession). It doesn't really matter what is in a virtual shelf on company server, as long as you never re-download it again. The titles on a virtual shelf are not really yet in your possession, until you download the games from there. The server owner can still prevent you from accessing (downloading) those games, either by shutting down the server, or removing your account.

Depending on a country, reselling the game may still be illegal either way if the EULA/TOS says so.

Quote not copied because it is just the post above.

The problem with this discussion is that everybody insists on his/her own definition of what DRM is. So I wanted to chip in mine. To say it very simple: I compare a game with a T-Shirt and I want to be able to do the same things with both of them (not literally of course). If this is not possible or forbidden, than my rights are restricted. Then I would speak of restricted rights. For games, DRM free games on a physical media or a resellable download fullfill this definition.

You said that a legal restriction will not make it impossible for you to play a game in 10-15 years from now? How should I understand it? How do you want to play it without breaking the legal restriction? (Even if a company gets bankrupty, often the IP of them is transferred and does not expire.)

So in what way do DRM and legal restrictions retrict me differently, if I am not willing to break legal restrictions?

You asked for an example of a legal restriction that is not backed up by a technical restriction. I am sure there are enough of them and some examples that come to my mind are that you are normally not allowed to reengineer a software or to distribute it or to distribute lots of ingame content like screenshots, but not everything of these is technically limited (which would probably require OS level or hardware implementation of "protective" algorithms anyway). Also the reselling of GOGs is not strictly technically limited. (My computer would not crash, if I would put one of my GOGs on Ebay).

In the end I really don't care about the name of the thing. But I just want to stress that for me legal restrictions count pretty much equal to technical restrictions and the difference doesn't really matter. What matters is what you can do with it in the end! Basically only DRM free games on a physical media or a resellable download fullfill all my desires of what I want to do with a piece of software and everything else including GOG, GamersGate, Steam, ... falls short of that to some extent or even more.

I am open to everyone who explains me how these restrictions must be called and why and I will not argue about it. :)

For me, the label DRM free on GOG or GamersGate is just advertising. They all mean something different with it. I don't care about the labels, I just judge them for how much value they give.

Wikipedia wins, so I use their definition.

Ah, now I understand you much better. I say, we clearly need new terms describing the amounts of rights the customer is left with. We could also differentiate between rights that are lost due to technical restrictions and the contract and rights that are just not part of the contract, but I really do not care much about this distinction because both limits me.

I think it was covered up above, but hopefully this will help you understand many of the responses. GoG games are DRM free. This means they don't MANAGE your RIGHTS DIGITALLY. There are no measures or even checks and balances to prevent you from playing your game your way. DRM is a physical restriction on a software or hardware level. I've now bought roughly 9 GoG games and I can agree with the claim that they are DRM free.

The TOS (Terms of service) is what governs your account. You agreed to this before you ever bought a GoG game. Its the rules outside of the game and your PC. It can't possibly be DRM since it was agreed apon by you before you ever bought the game. For it to be DRM there would have to be a physical barrier at your router or hard drive or NiC to keep you from selling the game. This isn't the case. You simply agree that you won't.

The difference between GoG and Steam is that Steam puts in measures via its client that MUST run to make your games function that prevent you from reselling games. Even talking about reselling games led to an EA user's account being banned which did not allow the user to access his paid for games. GoG does not have any sort of measure like this in place to PREVENT you or PUNISH you for breaking the ToS, hence the ToS is not also DRM.

It sounds like you agree with the DRM-free version of the GoG games, but not the ToS. Personally I'm ok with the ToS. It costs $9.99 just to go to the movie now, so if I buy a horrible game for 10.00 its no different than seeing a bad movie at the theatre. I can't sell my bad movie experience. I'm not really interested in reselling my games. I'd rather others buy from GoG and support the mentality that gamers are willing to pay for honest technology that lets them enjoy games the way they like. So I agree with both the ToS and the DRM-free nature of their games.


Hope that helps.

Yes I now agree with the supossedly common definition that DRM is only concerned with technical aspects. For me the legal aspects are also important. They all are restrictions. (And not only does one agree to the ToS, but via the ToS also to the DRM - so agreement is not liking.)

So I would say that DRM isn't everything that can be bad about a game. And the terms of services of GOG or Steam are actually not that different, only the DRM implementation is. Or to say it like this: where GOG trusts, Steam doesn not trust but controls.

What hucklebarry says in the end is that one makes compromises between rights and price. If the price is low enough, even restricted rights can still be seen as a good deal. This is probably also true for DRM, if the price is only low enough. ( But if there ever comes a competitor to GOG that allows resellability and ownership in the sense of traditional physical goods, I will be gone in a second. I just don't like to rent games - it's a personal habit.)

I both disagree with this and agree with this. I disagree with the fact that every ToS that attempts to limit rights is DRM. I agree that whether or not something is legal in the first place matters for the purposes of exactly what constitutes DRM.

GOG's account system is DRM because the accounts are digital and it artificially makes it so you can't legally sell your games. (It doesn't matter that you can illegally sell them, as that isn't a right so it doesn't fall under rights management)

If, say, GOG allowed transfers between accounts it wouldn't be DRM, but it would still be a restriction, as sales would require the buyer to have a GOG account, but it wouldn't be DRM.