People might consider his examples extreme, but there is a point.
People ask "what gives you the right to pirate games?"
Well, what gave black slaves the right to freedom? That right didn't exist - they were property. People decided that was wrong, and fought for their freedom. I'm willing to bet that, in one way or another, one or more laws were broken in the fight for equality and the end of slavery.
You can ***** how you can't possibly compare slavery to gaming, but you can. The only difference is where you draw the line; both are examples of an "accepted" practice that one group find acceptable, another group find deplorable, and the only solution involves breaking the law and/or forcing a change in the law.
One can argue with validity that the implications of DRM are not as serious as the implications of Slavery. That is a valid point. However, it is also a sleight of hand to try and get people to stop paying attention to the issue, so we will ignore that as well.
Nobody wants DRM. Nobody. People may want to stop piracy, but most of us are not willing to sacrifice liberties and freedoms to achieve it. When it is not possible to accomplish this by legal means, we break the law. We do not break the law because we are malicious or antisocial, we break the law because the law has failed to keep pace with our requirements.
Allow me to give an example of this. In the UK, it is illegal to transfer music from one format to another. In lamen's terms, if an American buys a CD, burns it onto their Hard Drive and then puts it on their iPod, that is legal. If I do it, it is illegal. Yes, in the UK it is against the law to buy a CD, copy it onto your PC, and put it on your MP3 player.
So, I have just bought the latest Korpiklaani CD. I want it on my iPod. the Law says I have to buy that CD again off the iTunes store. Who here thinks this is unfair? I do! I paid for it, I should be able to do what I want with it. So long as I'm not burning copies to sell, or otherwise distribute, I should be allowed to do as I please. For the record, I usually burn a backup CD to keep in the car, so if anything ever happens to my car and the CD player is stolen / damaged, I don't lose the original. Again, probably not legal, but the music company has had my money, and I consider it fair use.
I submit to you all that, as the article says, most Pirates want to buy games. However, for one reason or another, they cannot. Price is an age-old issue, and it's one that isn't easily resolved. Releasing a game electronically reduces initial costs, but these games then usually squat at release price for all time. My local game store had the original Quake for 99p. I'm guessing it'd be a fair bit more than that if it was on Steam or similar.
DRM is, however, a much easier problem to tackle - the developers can simply drop it. We do not want to be spied on by anyone, especially not a private company. I'm sure someone will doubt that bullshit line of "the innocent have nothing to hide", but that's the exact kind of thinking that leads to draconic police states. Innocent people don't need to hide things, but they have the right to hide things! Then there is the very valid point that even 'innocent' people use their PC to store / transfer secure information; imagine a DRM that gave EA access to your bank account details, which were then stolen by one of their employees.
We have rights. We have the right not to live in a Police State. This is 2009, not 1984, and it's about time everyone realised that! That goes for government, for private companies, and for the common people; all are equally to blame. Government and companies infringe on our liberties, and it is the duty of the common people to fight back.
Today it's DRM. Tomorrow it's biometric data. Ten years from now, it's your right to breed. Where exactly do you wish to draw the line?
