DRM and Piracy: The Vicious Circle
August 19, 2008 11:27
I have a confession to make: I'm not terribly concerned about digital rights (or "restrictions," depending on who you ask) management, commonly referred to as "DRM." It has absolutely no effect on my decision to buy a game. Since I can feel the fires under me growing as I write this let me also go ahead and say that this is not a pro-DRM column. I recognize the problems with DRM - which we'll get into later - but I'd rather play the games associated with DRM (Mass Effect, BioShock, etc.) than protest the use of it by not buying them. The other option, chosen by far too many, is to stick it to companies that employ DRM by pirating the games that include it out of spite. Unfortunately more piracy leads to stricter DRM which in turn leads to more piracy and so on and so on. DRM and piracy are currently tied together in a self-replicating loop that could affect PC gaming negatively. And that does concerns me.
First I want to talk about this word "draconian" that gets thrown around haphazardly in articles about DRM. It's a great word with such a sinister connotation. The problem is that "draconian" has almost nothing to do with DRM, fascism, big-brother or invasion of privacy. "Draconian" describes something as being unusually harsh or severe. It's a reference to Draco, an ancient Athenian lawmaker who instituted a code of laws that implemented the death penalty as punishment for trivial offenses. DRM is not a punishment for piracy, it's a method of prevention and not one I would constitute as "severe" or "cruel." If DRM is easily cracked and circumvented - one of the problems with its implementation - then it isn't draconian regardless of the intent of the publisher utilizing the software. So until DRM causes your computer to murder you upon discovery of illegally obtained software, let's leave Draco out of it.
When talking about DRM it's important to remember the difference between reality and perception. The reality is that DRM in its current state is not a solution to piracy. It causes problems for and imposes limitations on paying customers while having almost no adverse effects on the people who aren't paying for the games. It is easily and quickly defeated by pirates making it completely ineffectual. That may be the reality of it but the publisher's perception is that DRM will eventually minimize the number of pirated copies to the extent that they are no longer a concern.
We interview a lot of publishers and developers who, almost universally, share the feeling that piracy is a threat to PC gaming. Their options for combating piracy are to employ DRM measures or to do nothing at all. Publishers use DRM because the cost of implementing it is less than the projected loss of revenue attributable to illegal distribution. As piracy increases so does the projected figure for loss of revenue which in turn justifies more money to be spent on prevention in the form of stricter and more invasive DRM measures. So by engaging in piracy to combat DRM, you're actually validating its further use and development by the companies that see it as a solution. What I'm saying is if you pirate games, you encourage DRM.
Developer BioWare came under fire for its initial plan of continuous authentication for PC title Mass Effect but opted to withdraw the recurring check system after fans complained.
The common pirate justification is, "I wasn't going to buy the game anyway so no money was lost." I don't believe that one bit. This suggests that all the people taking the time to download games don't really want to play them. It suggests that, given the only alternative of buying them, they'd just as soon grab a nearby book or watch television. Please. Gamers love to play games and in the absence of free games they will pay to do it. If the piracy problem was suddenly solved completely, I believe you'd see a sharp increase in game sales. Most PC game publishers share that belief and their perception is that every pirated copy and every downloaded torrent is a lost sale that can't be ignored.
I say "most publishers" because there are rare exceptions. Stardock, publisher of Sins of a Solar Empire, is one of the publishers that doesn't see DRM as a solution to piracy. As a matter of fact, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has stated in interviews that Stardock addresses the wants and needs of its customers and does not consider pirates as a group worthy of attention. That's a very gamer-centric and optimistic view of the PC games industry and one that deserves a bit of brand loyalty. So how do we reward Stardock for their stance on DRM? By pirating copies of Sins of a Solar Empire, of course. Not only is DRM not a solution to piracy it appears that publicly coming out against DRM isn't either.
PC gamers and PC game publishers are at odds at the moment over the piracy/DRM debate and as long as piracy is on the radar of the publishers DRM will continue to exist. I see two possible outcomes for the future of DRM: either piracy inexplicably decreases on its own below the threshold where companies see DRM as a necessity or DRM measures become so effective that the number of people who can circumvent them becomes insignificant when compared to the number of people buying games. Which do you think is more likely?
I'll close with a quote about DRM from a 2003 essay on the dangers of digital information control called "The Digital Imprimatur" written by John Walker, co-founder of Autodesk (creators of AutoCAD) and now A.I. enthusiast and digital freedom advocate:
"It's not as if one night everything will be as it was in 1999 and suddenly, the next morning, the entire Trusted Computing and Secure Internet suite of technologies [DRM] will be in place. The process will be evolutionary, providing a transition for the enormous installed base, and will probably take a decade or more to be fully realized. Along the way, there will be a variety of interim steps and transitional mechanisms, all of which will have their own limitations and vulnerabilities. But slowly, surely the screw will tighten."
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