[tetsuo13]

It's too late for that. DRM was invented as a result of rampant piracy. You should be blaming the pirates rather than the company using it.

People were sharing programs long before p2p became popular. Only difference in recent years to accessibility to the copying mechanisms. Blame it on the Internet taking off and creating a world where bits are no longer a scarcity, where purchasing a physical media containing those bits is becoming legacy. With the Internet making it easy for anyone to copy anything suddenly those that made those physical copies weren't needed as much. Certainly their value has been questioned.

DRM became widespread as a way for the content distributors to maintain their status quo without having to change their business model in any way.

[rick888]

"People were sharing programs long before p2p became popular. Only difference in recent years to accessibility to the copying mechanisms. Blame it on the Internet taking off and creating a world where bits are no longer a scarcity,"

The bits were never a scarcity. The creative work and thousands of man-hours that it takes to place those bits in a specific order is the scarcity. If this were not the case, anybody could create (not copy) an application like Photoshop.

"where purchasing a physical media containing those bits is becoming legacy. With the Internet making it easy for anyone to copy anything suddenly those that made those physical copies weren't needed as much. Certainly their value has been questioned."

A dollar bill is just ink and paper. But it's worth much more than that. Paintings are worth much more than the sum of the items used to create them. There are many more examples like this. I know you aren't this dense.

"DRM became widespread as a way for the content distributors to maintain their status quo without having to change their business model in any way."

How are they going to make money? A service? We see how well people like that with assassin's creed 2. Advertising? works very well with all of the adblockers out there.

Companies aren't going to change their business model because they don't need to. The games are still just as good, people are playing them, they just aren't paying for them.

If the community really wants to change the business, they need to actually compete. This means developing real applications and games that are better than the ones already out there. But this will never happen because it's easier to just copy games and tell everyone why you deserve to get it for free.

[Xurinos]

The bits were never a scarcity.

Software sellers have attempted to make them so with the use of legal wording, sternly-worded threats, and excellent politics. Before it was easy to transmit things electronically, we had to pass around physical media that held them if we wanted to share with others.

Excepting people trying to inch out that extra cent out of people, nobody thinks there is something wrong with this sharing. You can borrow a car, borrow a book, borrow an NES cartridge, even borrow a whole computer, and this is seen as socially acceptable (we learned the value of sharing in Kindergarten). Sometimes you determine that you want this item for yourself, so you buy it, and you might not have bought it at all had it not been for your exposure to and enjoyment of it.

The problem with PC software is that unlike these other works of art, it is trivial to copy. That should be a warning flag that a business model around software needs to approach things a little differently. Sure, a good percentage of people will look for something for nothing and feel no guilt over it, will not try to compensate for it; in this medium, they will often succeed, too. This is a fact of the technology.

The creative work and thousands of man-hours

This is noble, but do you really expect customers to offer up money for software because of the actions of somebody behind the scenes of that software? I know when I browse games on the shelves, I am not thinking about the programmers, the artists, the voice actors, the publishers, or anyone else involved. I am thinking of how fun I expect that game to be and if I can afford it this month. I am also thinking of the brand of that game; for example, Ubisoft has disappointed me enough times with their MMOs that I refuse to be fooled again, no matter how cool it looks. On the other hand, I am a consistent sucker for games by Square and Bioware. Your average consumer does not place the same value on the workers as the workers place on themselves.

Companies aren't going to change their business model because they don't need to. The games are still just as good, people are playing them, they just aren't paying for them.

This is a contradiction. Admittedly, DRM is one way to change the business model. It is working for some companies in the way it is implemented. As you mention later, competition can demonstrate this model's weaknesses, but that is also the nature of business: you must keep evolving to meet the challenges of the times.