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(1) SecuROM doesn’t reduce Internet piracy. All SecuROM games have been available on large P2P sites before, or around release date. Whoever wants to download it, can download it.
(2) SecuROM does not bother crackers. The scene is all about competition: those who crack it first get all the respect. What more and more elaborate copy protections do is livening up the competition.
(3) SecuROM does not work, and neither does any other copy protection that still allows customers to use their product. See (1) and (2)
(4) SecuROM does not bother those who play an illegitimate copy of a game. Scene releases are guaranteed to work. If they don’t, a proper will be released within hours. The only people who can get trouble from a copy protection scheme are those who did not remove it with a crack – these are the loyal customers.
(5) SecuROM prevents buyers from playing their game on many systems, because of software they have installed for legitimate reasons. It is rude to request a user to quit or uninstall other programs.
(6) It is just as rude to install unwanted, hidden, and hard-to-remove software on a users computer.
(7) SecuROM prevents buyers from playing their game if they do not have an Internet connection, their connection is currently down, or for example if they are trying to play on a notebook while traveling.
(8) SecuROM games will fail to work, and lose all their value, once the activation servers are taken offline, for financial or other reasons, or if the publisher goes out of business. Owners of the game will have to resort to methods that are illegal in some areas of the world, if they want to keep playing.
(9) Promising a patch to remove SecuROM before taking down the servers does not cut it. If the servers are not financially viable anymore, chances are programming and distributing a patch isn’t either. And who is responsible to keep the promise if the company goes out of business?
(10) Inference: SecuROM greatly reduces the value of the retail product, while increasing the relative value of the illegitimate copy. Customers pay for a product if they think they’ll get their money’s worth. Lowering the value of the product is counter-productive. Piracy can be fought by increasing the value of the retail prodict, giving potential pirates an incentive to buy instead.
(11) The majority of pirates are not potential customers, i.e. they would not buy a game for any price, they would just not play it. They download the game not because they want to play it, they download it because they can, and because it is free.
(12) Out of all the pirates that do not fall under (11), a majority are not potential customers either because they could not afford it. A persons financial resources, and their time, are limited. This is especially true for kids and poor people. Someone who makes $500 a month would not have bought 20 games, even if they downloaded that many.
(13) Inference: the damages supposedly caused by digital piracy are often greatly overstated, and mostly virtual. In most cases, a pirated copy is not a lost sale. This does not apply to “real” piracy, such as stores who sell counterfeit copies.
(14) SecuROM has caused gread dissatisfaction with loyal customers, for example as evidenced by the Amazon.com reviews for Spore, Mirror’s Edge, Mass Effect, or Grand Theft Auto IV.
(15) Inference: Publishers are basing their copy protection decisions on pirates, instead of their customers.
(16) The lesson to be learned is: piracy is a fact, and it always will be. If someone wants to get a game for free, they will get it. Thus piracy has to be fought by creating an incentive to buy, rather than trying to fight an uphill battle against a force that, by its very nature, cannot be defeated.
(17) Inference: While it is claiming to do the exact opposite, SecuROM does actually increase piracy. (11) and (12) made a point to show that a pirated copy does not equal a lost sale, because most potential customers do not see it as an alternative to a legit copy. SecuROM, however, has the potential of making more people think that way, because the relative value of the pirated copy as compared to the retail copy is increased. It could even spark the incentive to pay money for an illegitimate copy, because it works better than the legitimate copy.
(18) If PC game sales decline or are lower than expected, piracy cannot seriously be considered a major factor as long as DRM is part of the picture and ignored.
Additions and corrections welcome.
