When DRM Strikes

Written by tinfoil on Tuesday, 17 June 2008 23:18

I need not explain my views on Digital Rights Management, or as Richard Stallman calls it Digital Restrictions Management. I do, however, take some measure of pleasure in reading stories such as this one:

This can be triggered via using up your 3 activations and each time you change a piece of hardware, reformat your computer or install/upgrade a new operating system, it takes up one of the activations.
This is proven to be true by a guy over at the Mass Effect forums. He registered and started to play the game (Activation #1). Well, when he tried to play the game he had strange artifacts on his screen. Thinking it was an OS-related issue, he reinstalled XP and reinstalled the game (Activation #2). Finding out that it didn’t help the problem, he soon figured out it was his graphics card struggling. Well, he bought a brand new card and that solved the problem (this triggers Activation #3). Game ran fine for a short period of time (2 days) and he played thru it and completed the game. Well, a week after that, he decided he wanted to run thru the game again. This is where he stumbles upon this error:

“The game can not start. For security reasons, only a limited number of machines can ever be licensed by a single purchase. This limit has been reached. Please purchase another registration code, reinstall, and then try again."

I have had similar problems with DRM enabled software. I purchased Bioshock & Half Life 2 when they were first released. Due to the software wanting to register before I was allowed to play and due to the extreme popularity of both titles, the servers were swamped and I was unable to play either game for a day or two until the rush was over and I could finally get the software to connect. Some might see it as a minor issue, but it is things like that that show DRM is broken.

Also from the article:

If you are a Pirate:

BAD: You do have the same bugs that those with legal copies have, plus new ones depending on how the cracked copy was programmed.
GOOD: Unlimited Activations!
GOOD: No SecuROM to deal with
GOOD & BAD: It’s free, but illegal

If you are a Legal Customer:

BAD: Limited to 3 Activations
BAD: Your computer is plaqued with SecuROM
BAD: Game contains errors and bugs
GOOD & BAD: You support Maxis by purchasing the game, but you are also supporting EA, and if you support them, you support SecuROM

Honestly…what looks better to you?