The RIAA says it. They churn out bad music on CDs. So yeah, DRM on CDs is dead.... like in 2001. We just need the ESA to say it.

Ah, misquote because I couldn't be bothered to go back and check exactly what he said. Nevertheless, it's still a horribly inaccurate analogy.

Then again, most current games are so uninteresting that, DRM or not, there is no chance I'd buy them.

I'm sorry to hear of your suffering. I, on the other hand, am really quite enjoying the PC gaming market at the mo. I'm finding myself buying new games more frequently than I ever have. Long live indie devs!

How so?

I rarely feel patriotic, but this is one of those times. :)

Not sure it's the best idea to get in to this discussion but what the hell :).
The reason piracy is not the same as theft, and thus not the same as stealing/borrowing a neighbours Ferrari is that piracy does not deprive the owner of their property. When I take my neighbours Ferrari he doesn't have it any more. If I were to download a game it doesn't affect the owner of the IP in any way unless a) I would have bought it or b) I share it to someone who would have bought it. Even in those two circumstances it wouldn't be the same.
Comparing piracy to theft just complicates things - piracy is by and large a bad thing and doesn't need bullshit hyperbole to confuse the discussion.

Theft is diminishing the available goods, in theory piracy is increasing them (though to the detriment of rights holders). Big difference

Why would it be a bad idea?
Ah yes, I would agree. I see why he would think differently, but I suppose it's partly because he's kind of blinded, being a developer.

The DRM/piracy discussion often ends up going in circles with both sides refusing to budge. I didn't realise you were more sensible than that :).

Unfortunately, despite whatever developers' intentions may be, it most often seems to play out as a perfect example of Clark's Law (sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice). This is because the publishers and developers, in their attempt to solve the tangential issue of piracy, end up compounding the actual issue they need to be dealing with- people choosing to not buy their games.

Yeah, but for those that don't use heavy DRM it (apparently) helps sales more than it hurts. I mean, it's basically impossible to prove, but that's what some reasonably smart publishers have said. Capcom is who I have in mind -- they said even if 3-4% of people buy instead of pirating due to their DRM, then it's worth it. Course, yeah, 3-4% or more people not buying because of it seems reasonable too. But they seem very sure it's worth it, and I know they're not idiots.

Without any clear studies any claims about the effects of DRM need to be taken with a very large grain of salt. And while the developers and publishers aren't idiots, it's probably a safe bet that they also aren't trained statisticians who have spent thousands of hours correlating DRM systems with sales numbers, piracy numbers, game genres and ratings, market demographics, etc, which is what would be needed to even begin to get any kind of clear idea what relationship actually exists between sales, profit, piracy, and DRM. This isn't to say that there aren't or can't be cases where the inclusion of DRM was certainly worth it to the publishers and developers, but I don't think any current claims made by them can be taken as any more than a "gut feeling" level of analysis.

Honestly, I am not a fan of DRM, but in new releases (GOG excluded, of course) it really does seem to help, at least initially. From what I've seen, preventing piracy the first week, even only the first day, convinces impatient people to buy the game instead of pirating it.
I noticed this in particular with the release of Dark Athena, which, as some of you may know, had incredibly intrusive DRM. IIRC, its DRM was not cracked until about a week after its release, which caused many people to comment that they had purchased it in store instead of waiting for a cracked version.
Now, if you look at some games released completely without DRM, Demigod and World of Goo, you'll see that a lack of DRM (despite what many people who pirate say) often leads to increased piracy rates. I'm sure most of you are familiar with what happened with Demigod, which had about 85% of day one users being pirates, which, in turn, lowered reviewers scores of the game (as it caused connection problems). World of Goo, according to one of the developers, had a 90% piracy rate.
Of course, there are other factors that contribute to the piracy amounts and, of course, I'm missing some arguments from some sides as well as relying on anecdotal evidence, but from what I've seen, DRM appears to help prevent piracy, despite what many pirates say (that they only pirate games with DRM).
This makes me view GOG, 2DBoy, Stardock, and other DRM-free groups as saints and companies who use DRM as normal, not as something malicious. It is pirates that garner scorn from me. After all, pirates are the primary reason for DRM.
Of course, there are lines that should not be crossed, and requiring full time internet connections for single-player play is, in my eyes, completely unacceptable (I'm looking at you, Command & Conquer 4). It's a shame, because I enjoyed Command & Conquer 3, despite what people said, and was looking forward to C&C 4 before I heard the news.

Like far too many publishers and developers, you're completely missing what should be the main point. The extent to which DRM reduces piracy is in itself irrelevant. The question that needs to be addressed is the net effect that DRM has on sales (or more precisely, net income). What does it matter if you prevent 100,000 instances of piracy, turning 5,000 of those into sales, if at the same time the inclusion of the DRM scheme convinced 20,000 people to simply not buy the game. Unfortunately, it would require a pretty massive statistical study to get any worthwhile data on this matter, so any claims on the (in)effectiveness of DRM amounts to little more than handwaving at this point in time.