Well there is good DRM and bad DRM (for those that don't know, DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and is additional software bundled into games, movies, etc. to stop piracy).
For example, limited installs of a product is ridiculous - that's an example of horrible DRM and Apple is actually guilty of it with their iTunes playlists and such.
A good example of DRM, to me, is Blizzard's Battle.net. You can pirate any of their games fairly easily, but on their older games, only one person could connect per CD key to the web with the game, making CD key sharing pointless. Nowadays, you just can't hop online at all if you pirate the game. I love this, because honestly I don't like the idea of playing a video game with someone that pirated it on the web. Paying for a product is a good thing, but not for all products continuously.
Things like music should never be a luxury that only the rich can enjoy. I see no problem with someone who barely has any money pirating tens of thousands of songs. Why not add a little good into their lives?
If I owned pirated material, I wouldn't care if people were copying it. It's my own job to give them incentive to buy the real thing. This applies to magic as well.
So many people are anti-piracy for magic and the like, but my stance on it is very strict:
Offer something with your DVD/book/PDF/etc. that you cannot get if you only own a digital copy. First of all, demanding that nobody pirates a .pdf file is silly, and although it may be "uncool" for Johnny to illegally download Lee Asher's work, as Lee Asher I wouldn't pursue the kid to court if I found out about it.
Take Pure Smoke, for example. You can go download it for free, but what good does it do you if you don't have the rest of the items the trick comes with?
Look at Dresscode by Calen Morelli, and how something so tiny can make the DVD itself worth purchasing (those of you that have it know what this something is). Granted, it's bypassable, so why not throw in added incentive and bundle the whole gaff, premade, into the DVD? Increase the price, and all of a sudden people that could pirate it for free would have to work hard to use the trick, whereas those that pay get the benefit of having it done for them.
The point is, as a paying customer I want to feel better than the guy who gets stuff free. That's why I enjoy movie theatres, but have never purchased a movie on DVD in my life. What benefit do I get from paying for the DVD that the pirate does not get?
My stance on music is quite simple: pirate everything that isn't from an indie artist, or from a band you genuinely love. For those that say it's stealing from the artist, the artist that signs with a record label sees only about 5-10% of the total profits, and makes the vast majority of his or her money from concerts and tours.
If you really want to support artists, go to their concerts!
However, like Curt my biggest fear is the idea that censoring the Internet will become acceptable, and a moral thing to do. Freedom of speech is on the most slippery slope it has ever been with the advent of the World Wide Web, and we are one tiny little step from being akin to China or Iran.
The day the US government censors my web, will be the day I riot. I will not be forced into ignorance by politicians and corporate America. I urge all of you in the States to contact your local representatives and tell them blatantly that they will lose your vote if they vote yes to SOPA.
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