{"id":1817,"date":"2008-08-15T11:00:14","date_gmt":"2008-08-15T16:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1817"},"modified":"2008-08-15T11:21:07","modified_gmt":"2008-08-15T16:21:07","slug":"sunshine-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1817","title":{"rendered":"Sunshine Dust?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Somebody has this to say<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I can't trust Shamus or his Stolen Pixels. I know the guy has powerful anti-DRM ethics, but he lives in some world made of sunshine dust where wiping out DRM will solve all our problems. I do believe that anti-piracy is necessary… but I also don't want to piss off my customers. Is there a way out of this mess?<\/div>\n

I know I re-state my thoughts on DRM<\/a> pretty often, but I’m always happy to do so whenever people give me an excuse. Particularly when it dovetails so nicely with today’s comic<\/a>. In case there is any confusion, I do not<\/strong> think eliminating DRM will solve all our problems. I maintain that obtrusive DRM is a problem in addition<\/em> to piracy. I even grudgingly accept DRM, but for it to work, it must:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Respect the rights of the consumer. This means online activation for a single-player game is a deal-breaker.\n<\/li>\n
  2. It must be as hassle-free as you can make it. CD checks? Codebooks? CD keys? They all have their drawbacks, but they all prevent effortless piracy. (Passing around a CD.) A user must download a crack or make some<\/em> kind of effort to thwart these methods. This means that users who pirate the game are making a deliberate decision to do so. That’s the best you can hope for. Anything beyond that is needless hassle which only applies to legit users.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Let us consider two games: The first has a CD check, which requires the disc be in the drive. The other has the disc check, a CD key, it installs SercuROM, and requires online activation.<\/p>\n

    Which is harder to pirate? It’s a trick question. For every single would-be pirate, the process for pirating these two games is identical: Download the cracked version from the torrents. <\/p>\n

    But which is harder for honest users to run? Obviously the second one, by far. A very small minority might refuse to buy the first game because of the CD check. A lot<\/em> of people will avoid the second. Or they will get it and become infuriated by the hassle.<\/p>\n

    I do not ask anyone to “trust” me or my Stolen Pixels. I’m merely making the case that there are cheaper and more effective ways of fighting piracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    On the other hand, after hearing people fault me for being too angry and cynical, it’s nice to have someone charge me with undue optimism for a change. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Somebody has this to say: I can't trust Shamus or his Stolen Pixels. I know the guy has powerful anti-DRM ethics, but he lives in some world made of sunshine dust where wiping out DRM will solve all our problems. I do believe that anti-piracy is necessary… but I also don't want to piss off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-1817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","tag-drm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}