The IP to physical adress connection should be flawless. So you could at least with high security say where it originated from without knowing the person. If you then would implement a three-strikes model (two times you're warned, then there are fines) on the holder of the IP connection I think you could drive the probability of fining an innocent to very low values.
I also have piles of paper here but I rather had a sheet of paper stating my ownership of my GOG games than a Steam account.

But that's just the standard as it currently is. Officially everything that is printed out and signed counts. Even in science good conduct guides say that you should write a lab book containing all relevant information. So please be careful with your flying prints and put them in folders. :)

Yeah, sorry if I remain unconvinced with the frankly abysmal track record the providers have in my personal experience.

That's a fair point, although I suspect in most cases that the developer would long have ceased supporting the software anyway. The old games are almost never patched with the exception of installer updates, DOSBox configurations and the addition of missing files (I know there's a few exceptions like Postal 1 & 2). By the time GOG folds (which, like Valve, it undoubtedly and eventually will in years to come), the vast majority of these games will not have seen any actual patches for a long time and the original installers will continue to run on the hardware and OS that GOG supported at that time.

Games are unique in that the supply of patches and support is generally very short when you compare it to productivity software. Most games will see 5-6 patches at most (usually one or two, if any) within a timeframe of a year or so and that's it.

Why is he wasting time? Doesn't he have anything else to play in the meantime? I have maybe thousands of games in my backlog (or my gaming library, as I like to call it). I presume many other gamers also have lots of games in their backlog so that they can easily skip many recent releases.

Is someone wasting time for not running out now to buy GTA V for a console today, and waiting for the PC version instead, and maybe playing Saints Row IV in the meantime?

"Better" between services is a matter of opinion, of course.

But saying that a DRM-free release is more likely to be playable in the future than a DRM-release, is not. This is a fact. Just like it is a fact that if you use a safety belt while driving, you have a better probability of not hurting yourself, or even dying, while driving (and possibly getting into an accident).

You might keep claiming that using a safety belt/airbag wouldn't in general increase your chances of surviving a crash, but you would still be wrong.

Usually there are other reasons too, like the broken offline mode of Steam (it failed me last week, for example).

But even the long-term usability of games is good enough reason to prefer DRM-free or copy protection free games and media. Quite many Starforce and TAGES retail games fail nowadays due to the copy protection schemes that fail to work on newer Windows versions. The pirated versions where the DRM/copy protection is inert may still work fine.

If you do like Pheace and proclaim that you couldn't care less even if you lost all your Steam games one day just because the store you bought them from stops working, that's completely fine. But don't pretend that there is no chance of that ever happening, as if Steam is eternal.

Alternatively, you could just play the DRM-free versions on that same system (using emulators, if you need) that don't rely on Valve's goodwill to add the emulated versions into the new Steam client running on different hardware(OS.

And it is still an extra hurdle that you must wait for someone to solve for you, a hurdle that wouldn't exist at all with the DRM-free version.

Do you see yourself writing your messages here without a keyboard, even a virtual keyboard? Maybe write your messages with a motion controls, or speak out your messages so that everyone can hear them in the office?

Virtual keyboards on tablets show that there are always ways to emulate the other kinds of archaic controls.

That is irrelevant when talking about emulation. sure, it may be hard if not even impossible to run Windows applications directly on an Android device, no argument there. But that doesn't relate to this discussion in any way.

What an odd thing to say. Are you saying that a person can't at the same time being playing a legitime copy of a game, and illegally sharing it (or a pirated version) of it on some torrent site?

The two have absolutely nothing to do with it. CDPR was not trying to go after people who were currently playing The Witcher 2 (possibly illegally so). They were going after people who appeared to be sharing (uploading) the game on e.g. torrent sites.

(Actually it was the legal firm and their tech wizards doing the dirty work, not CDPR, of course.)

And that is exactly why I was for CDPR going after The Witcher 2 pirates, who were sharing it on torrent sites.

That's the same way how the people who are pirating cracked Steam games are caught, by the way. Steam DRM does nothing to help in catching the pirates.

No, that is not how the torrent seeders of copyrighted material are tracked.

They never did.

...

So if you are caught of seeding a cracked Steam game on a torrent site, you really think that showing a receipt or your Steam account details that you also own that game legitimely, gets you off the hook?

No it doesn't. Having a license to play the game didn't grant you a license to e.g. share the game to others, or sell copies of it. GOG Witcher 2 doesn't have DRM to prevent you from doing that, but that doesn't mean CDPR wouldn't come after you if you did it regardless.

Hence, treating only the criminals as criminals.

Only the customers who have chosen to share the same game on torrent sites to others, something they are not allowed to do.

I have never shared Witcher 2 on any torrent site, hence I haven't received any legal mail from a CDPR. If I had, I would have told them that they are mistaken, and they should recheck the ISP logs.

It doesn't matter, because owning a license to the game will probably not be considered as mitigating circumstances in court when you are accused of sharing a game illegally to others.

The potential problems with IP tracking come from many people, even households, using the same wifi router. So beyond that router, you can't necessarily tell for sure who exactly used it for the illegitimate purposes, unless the owner of the router knows, or the router logs can reveal that.

So yes, it may be hard to pinpoint exactly who in the vicinity of the router used the connection for hazy dealings. That's what the court (or police) would then have to decide, is there even a case to prosecute anyone.

The other theoretical possibility is that someone had left his wifi open (unsecured), and e.g. neighbor was using the connection all that time for pirating stuff. But nowadays routers are secured by default, and even if they weren't, it doesn't take long for police to check up on neighbors as well.

There was this kind of case here in Finland before, someone was doing something illegal (possibly sending life-threatening emails to someone or something like that, I don't recall), by using his neighbors open wifi connection without his consent. At first the police questioned that owner of the wifi router, but it didn't take long for them to track it to a neighbor.

That's a bit like someone stealing your car, and running over some pedestrian with it. First the cops might come to question you (as you are the owner of the car), but then they'd move on to finding out who was it exactly that used the car at a given time. In fact, if your car is not stolen, you as the car owner might be considered responsible if you had loaned it to someone who has gotten a speeding ticket from a speed camera. So if they can't tell who was driving the car, you as the car owner would have to pay the ticket.

So all in all, I personally feel that the cases of someone who is completely unrelated to the case being sued are close to nil in practice. But there may be cases where the culprit is never fully found, e.g. an university dorm where dozens of people have been using the same wifi router.

you do know that i have never talked about sharing your game, but playing a unlicensed copy (or a licensed one...) The rest is you inventions. You are very good at taking bits and pieces and applying it to something which may be related but is not the same as being talked about.

Then why are you even mentioning the case of CDPR going after The Witcher 2 pirates?

You don't seem to have a faintest idea how pirates (of games, music, movies or whatever digital media) are hunted down. It has absolutely nothing to do tracking the usage of that media, but sharing of it on torrent sites etc.

Just a sidequestion here, not a serious argument.

But at least over here in my country, practically every store has these, detectors' when walking in and out of the store. You need to walk through them to get in and out of the store. And on occasion, they even go off when they shouldn't, either because something bought in the store wasn't demagnitized properly, or something unrelated triggers it.

Does that qualify as treating your customers as criminals as well?

In the case of torrents, they are usually one and the same, as by default every torrent downloader is already uploading bits and pieces to others, already before their own download is finished. That's exactly what makes p2p technology so fast for mass delivery, and e.g. Humble Indie Bundle asks you to use the torrent download option instead of the direct HIB server links.

However, if the legal firm had been targetting also people who were only downloading, and not sharing at all, then it depends completely if mere downloading of the data is considered illegal in said country. I think the case happened in Germany, so is mere downloading (not sharing) of pirated digital media and games considered illegal in Germany?

If it is, then the legal firm had a case. If not, then they didn't have. As simple as that. Then again, I'd be very surprised if they had targeted people who only downloaded, if that isn't even illegal in the first place. It isn't hard to filter out those who don't share the game. But as soon as you upload even one bit of the data to others, you are sharing the copyrighted material as well.

Yes you could say that. So as I said before, if some store's detector keeps falsely alarming quite often when I go in and out of fhe store and I keep getting groped because of that, or otherwise causes me inconvenience for either buying or especially _using_ the product I have bought from there, I would take my business elsewhere. I would look for a detection-free store. Some others may choose to disregard the detectors, even if they gave them false alarms every now and then.

But since we are talking about DRM beyond just the purchasing process, a better analogy would be that the product you bought from the store would keep scanning even at your home whether you are still the legitime user of it, and sometimes give loud false alarms at your home in the middle of the night.

So in that sense, I don't mind GOG checking if my credit card is valid while I am buying a game from their store, because it doesn't affect the usage of that product thereafter. Just like the detectors on the store door don't.

By the way, are you sure you are now not defending DRM? Considering you seem to be so hypersensitive to the term "pro-DRM"? :)

Apart from you mentioning it just now, where are you implying I was being 'so hypersensitive' about the term "pro-DRM"?