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I don't know who that is but a few days ago I submitted a story on an interview with Sony's CEO [slashdot.org]:

In an interview with Nikkei Electronics Asia this month [nikkeibp.co.jp], Sony CEO and chairman Howard Stringer revealed an interesting point about open technologies: 'Customers will refuse to accept it unless the technology is open. Youth in particular really dislikes closed technologies, closed systems and the like. I think the failure of AOL LLC of the US is good evidence of this. When the Internet was just beginning to spread, AOL boosted its subscriber base by providing special services only to its customers. After a while, though, customers began rebelling, complaining that they weren't children. Because AOL wanted to keep them locked up in a narrow portion of the immense Internet cosmos, open technology was created. Sony hasn't taken open technology very seriously in the past. Its CONNECT music download service was a failure. It was based on OpenMG, a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. At the time, we thought we would make more money that way than with open technology, because we could manage the customers and their downloads. This approach, however, created a problem: customers couldn't download music from any Websites except those that contracted with Sony. If we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple Inc of the US.' He then mentions that Sony has a chance to provide something that Apple can't. Sounds like somebody should inform him of DRM-free iTunes [slashdot.org]. However when asked about customer confusion over too many open technologies, he claims that the customer will always like choice so the more the better.

Didn't get published so I thought I'd post it here as evidence that even the music distribution companies are saying, "Why bother with DRM?" Not surprising now that Amazon and iTunes are doing it though. I predict everyone will eventually pull their heads out of their asses, it just will take some longer than others.

DRM doesn't bother me nearly as much as stuff like Steam and the death of the second hand market. Can you imagine how difficult it will be to bring a game to your friends' house to play?

"Hey, Ron, it's Steve. Since we're going to hang out tomorrow, I suggest you start downloading Butt Zappers 2 now. It should take up about 20 GB of your hard drive space."

"OK, what's your Live username and password?"

"It's XXXXXX and XXXXX. My credit card's on that account, don't use it to download a bunch of games like you did last time, okay bro?"

"Sure dude, but what if this puts me up over my bandwidth cap, you'll pay me back, right?"

"I guess."

"Wait a minute, I don't have any room on my hard drive left."

"So, just delete some of your old stuff. You can always download it later."

"Are you gonna pay for me to download all that stuff too?"

"Dude, I knew we should have gotten Playstation, Sony made a deal with Comcast and PSN downloads don't count against the cap."

"Yeah, and maybe we'd actually be able to download it. Looks like the Butt Zappers server is slammed right now."

Honestly, if they try to foist that stuff on us, I'll just stick with the old, disc-based systems.

Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy,' Carmel explains. 'What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold.

This struck me as a hypocritical position on the part of those game publishers. Either IP is property or it is not. If it is property, then there should be no restrictions allowed on whether or how frequently it can be resold (i.e. no one tries to stop you from reselling your car or your house). If it is not property, then there should be no artificial scarcity surrounding it which would also make this or any other DRM an inappropriate practice.

It should be obvious that what they seem to want is a level of control that is unavailable to the manufacturers of any other sort of good or service. It's surprising that anyone takes them seriously. Much lively debate occurs on the fine nuances of copyright law while missing the point that what they want is to be singularly special, to wield powers unavailable to other industries. That's known as the inability to see the forest for all the trees. That's why I think it's a phony debate, just like most media discourse surrounding what should be regarded as power grabs. They are aiming at an unreasonable amount of control over the marketplace in the name of copyright.

• The person has no interest in the game, but will download a "free" copy because it's "free,"
• The person cannot afford the full retail price of the game, or
• The person wants to evaluate the full version, not some crippled demo,

When I was a starving student (and associate engineer struggling to pay rent), I had a very slim budget, and would play "warez" until I could save/beg/borrow enough to buy the full versions, and I would *unless* the game sucked anyway. Now that I can afford software and music, I make it a point not to pirate copyrighted info, but I will still "evaluate" music before I buy it from MPAA publishers. And most people I know feel the same way.

So, the real product that DRM protects is the "Turd in a Can," a product that the consumer would not pay for if they knew beforehand that they were buying crap.

Let us consider, for a moment, a DRM-loaded game from the past year.

Spore.

Its DRM was considered by some to be so limiting that some people simply never played the game. People were exasperated that, at release, it allowed only one user account per copy. That installs couldn't be "restored" by uninstalling the game (many of these things have been added since).

OK, so all that said, copies of Spore were still readily available for download a week prior to release on torrent sites all over the world. Despite cumbersome DRM, that in some cases prevented actual customers from being able to extract full enjoyment from the product they purchased, anyone that wanted a DRM-free copy could still have gotten one prior to the release of the game.

Lesson: It. Doesn't. Work.

Maybe...maybe it prevents someone from taking the game to a friend's house and installing it, or the like. But it isn't preventing wide-scale piracy, even during that "critical first week".

I never buy a game in the first month, let along the first week of a release. Mostly, I'm waiting for the quality of the game to become apparent after some play in the real world, and also I don't like the bleeding-edge prices of new releases.

Avoiding weird DRM is another benefit.

After a few days or weeks, the real effects of whatever cockamamie DRM scheme the publishers crowbarred onto the game become apparent.

After a few weeks or months, applications like Alcohol 120 will adapt so that I can be assured of making backups.

After a few months to a year, the price starts to dip into my admittedly modest range. By then, I know whether I can keep the game for myself if the company goes out of business, whether I'm facing potential hassle in making my own backups, and whether the game is worth it in the first place.

After a few years, the game may re-release with digital distributors under no-DRM agreements geared toward truly enthusiastic gaming communities. Witness GOG.com [gog.com].

Gaming on the long tail rules -- provided you're not desperate to get hopped up on the Newest, Shiniest Thing.

Get real. When was the last time a popular game* was released and it wasn't available that day via P2P? In fact you often see them days BEFORE release on P2P already cracked and ready to go.

I remember when Spore came out the first day or two had something like 30,000 seeders on TPB. Even right now there's about 15k people seeding both the star trek movie and the latest episode of fringe ... and as many people downloading. And this is just ONE tracker. It's actually faster to download the game/movie than drive to the store and buy it half of the time.

Any software company that deludes themselves into believing DRM stops piracy by any significant amount delusional. It's all about preventing resale...which is still detrimental to the customer. Stupid how a library can rend DVDs, CDs and books but somehow software managed to squeak in such an exception.

* Excluding exclusively online games (aka WoW, etc.)

"What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets."

Really?
Last time I checked, Gamestop sells used games a day or two after they come out (at $60) for $55.

And I haven't seen a PC game or peripheral (new or used) in a Gamestop in ages.

I mean, carmakers worry about it enough to *advertise* their car's historical resale value (well, if its good, eg Honda).

Granted, I suppose 'gamerz' probably dont worry *quite* as much about resale value when deciding to buy a game as someone buying a new car, but with the way the economy is going, they might start doing so more and more.

Just like companies that don't offer support (even documentation) on older products becuase they don't sell them anymore - no concept whatsoever that resale value might affect the price the market is willing to pay for new products.

Case in point:
Fire hoses do not work against pirates equipped with rocket propelled grenades.
Fire hoses have not be tested on thieves. EA may be working on the technology.

DRM has not been tested on pirates. The Coast Guard may be working on the technology (You pirate, you can no longer listen to your ipod! Bwahahaha!)
DRM does not work on thieves.

Shooting them in the head works on pirates.
Shooting them in the head is against the rules of engagement for thieves in this class. EA may be working to change that.

Here's the problem: That $50 price includes the game's value at resale. If the resale value is $35, then you're diminishing the value of the original purchase price by making it impossible for a 2nd buyer to use. Simple, basic economics. So, if you remove that functionality, some of which justifies the $50 price, the game is no longer worth $50, because the value of its resale is now gone.

So, the result of adding DRM to your game and not lowering your price to reflect the diminished value is that your game now appears overpriced. Good job, you've now guaranteed yourself flagging sales because of greed.

Imagine if car companies programmed their cars to self-destruct if sold to a second buyer. It's ridiculous. The argument that second hand sales take money out of the pocket's of the producers? Ridiculous also. Just stop it, you idiotic, economically ignorant publishers. Focus on making a damn good game, one that's good enough to purchase in the first place.