[Luvian]

It doesn't, but it changes the playing field. It is the reality for anything that can be distributed digitally.

Pissing off your customers won't help. Especially when they could just as easily get the things illegally. You say people would rather steal when they can. Why then are people buying when they could steal?

When the other alternative to a pay service is free widespread distribution you can't go around alienating customers. You've got to convince them your more expensive product has a better value than the one from the pirates. That won't happen when the customer feel cheated and distrusted.

BAEN found a way to fight the pirates and it works for them. Stardock simply decided to ignore the pirates and focus on customer's satisfaction, and it seems to work for them. But I have yet to see restrictive, draconian restrictions put on the customers having any positive effect on diminishing piracy. On the contrary; Spore which had online activation and limited installs has become one of the most pirated games of all time.

To get back to what I said in the beginning regarding these schemes. Either the board members leading these companies are total idiots completely disconnected from reality and sales charts, or they are greedy and trying to get some of that second-hand market money. Seeing as they're all successful multimillionaires with stock in a wide range of companies, and seeing what I've read on this subject on the net, I'd say the second option is much more likely.

So to get back to the subject of this topic again I'd say the DRM is anti-customers, but the used market customers.