Best article I've read on piracy in a long time.

Twenty Sided > The Truth About Piracy:

"I think the closest analogy of piracy is the one Bruce offered in the comments: It's like sneaking into a movie. Sure, it's not 'hurting' anyone - nobody becomes poorer by virtue of your viewing of the movie - and you are not depriving anyone else of the product. (We must assume the theater is infinite in size and all the seats offer the same view for this analogy to work.) But most people recognize that sneaking in is still wrong."

Shamus makes some interesting points. One point he makes is that he's worried that if people just stopped being pirates right now out of a desire to be honest, then the game companies would attribute it to DRM and enforce it from here on out. I disagree. That might be there initial reaction but if gamers really went honest, then taking your money and walking would make a much bigger difference. There would be no piracy to blame the slow sales on any more. And if non DRM games did well, it should be easy for even the idiots that use DRM to figure out.

Otherwise excellent article. I'm with him in that I don't agree with and can't condone piracy. I don't mind preaching about it though. Whatever people want to say the biggest reason we have DRM is because of the mass piracy that is out there. People who participate in piracy are making it worse for everyone else. The system can't sustain itself with pirates, and if it collapses I will be blaming pirates, not DRM. DRM may be a poor excuse to fix the problem, but it's purpose is to fix the problem.