[shmerl]

No, even if one assumes DRM not to be unethical, one can observe that DRM is nonsensical from the practical standpoint. I.e. because not only it doesn't reduce piracy while punishing only legitimate users, it even induces piracy! (See second and third links above).

[Arainach]

Does it, though? Even if you can't eliminate something, making it prohibitively difficult has an impact. In my younger days, at LAN parties where people could just pass around the installer of a game almost no one bought most of the games. As it became more and more difficult to find reliable sources of cracks/installers, the ratio of people deciding to purchase rather than put up with the hassle increased. Even if you CAN get a free version if you try hard enough, the level of trying required will cause more and more people to find it worth the purchase.

[shmerl]

> Even if you can't eliminate something, making it prohibitively difficult has an impact.

Technically adept pirates are actually encouraged by the mere presence of DRM, since they see breaking it as a sport. That happens fairly quickly, and the rest of the pirates never deal with it again.

So, there is an impact, just not the one you'd probably expect. Firstly, pirates are encouraged to pirate the material even if they don't care about the contents. I.e. DRM boosts piracy. Secondly, legitimate users are punished with this DRM degrading the quality of the product for them (while pirates enjoy the full quality, DRM-free pirated version). DRM is abysmally dumb from any common sense perspective of doing business.

> Even if you CAN get a free version if you try hard enough, the level of trying required will cause more and more people to find it worth the purchase.

Hard part of breaking it can be done by one pirate. The rest will use the DRM stripped version, nothing hard in it anymore.

I linked a few articles above where the point of DRM actually encouraging piracy is discussed. If you missed that, go through them:

* http://brutalgamer.com/2012/03/09/cd-project-red-drm-no-long...

* http://www.lexi-alexander.com/blog/2014/6/1/will-the-real-pi...

Another impact of DRM is certain amount of users who would simply avoid that product because they don't want to deal with any DRM to begin with.

[jamespo]

If it was beneficial for a company's bottom line to abandon DRM they would do it, so why don't they?

Does DRM boost piracy, are there actual statistics for this, those links seem short on facts? World of Goo was heavily pirated.

One thing piracy has boosted is the explosion of the freemium model.

[shmerl]

> Does DRM boost piracy, are there actual statistics for this, those links seem short on facts?

Those links explore the psychology of piracy, and note that DRM can boost it. Since pirates can be not interested in the material itself, but interested in breaking DRM for sport. Producing numbers is not an easy thing here, since there is no definitive way to count this globally (a concrete factual example was shown by CDPR though with their Witcher game).

However that's not even the main point. Even if DRM doesn't boost piracy significantly, the main issue here is that doesn't deter it, while on the other hand it punishes paying customers.

> If it was beneficial for a company's bottom line to abandon DRM they would do it, so why don't they?

Several possible reasons, none of them good and valid though. I listed them here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8070346

Probably #1 (intertia / lack of common sense) is the most common.

See what Cory Doctorow writes about authors actually losing opportunities to gain money because of publishers stupid insistence on DRM:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blog...