Yet another example of why DRM is Bad

DRM, or digital rights management, is the software that content vendors use to punish their loyal customers and (attempt to) control piracy. It adds to the cost of the products "protected" by it, it makes those products less useful to the people who buy them, and ultimately DRM doesn't do too much to protect the vendors.

Now, here's yet another voice: AbleGamers, "The Site for Disabled Gamers", points out that DRM is Killing the PC Gaming Market. Standard operating procedures for DRM software is to disable as many peripherals as possible, so you can't copy or scan or printout or do anything that might theoretically unprotect any of the "protected content". Too bad for disabled gamers, because they often depend on assistive peripherals that the DRM sees as "dangerous".

Mark Barlet, who wrote the article, points out that if you want a better gaming experience (e.g., fewer system crashes due to buggy DRM software), you can wait a day or so until the crackers release the non-DRM pirated version--but he would prefer to pay for a playable version in the first place. It's obvious that piracy can ruin software publishers, but the solution is to provide value to the legitimate user, not to punish your paying customers.