i do not support piracy but it is just so unfair that i paid money for something others get for free.
And that is where the slippery slope begins.
Please think about what you are saying there. This has
nothing to do with fairness. It is about choosing to live within the moral, ethical and legal boundaries that we have defined as a society. That is why, for example, piracy is so prevalent in China - as a society, they currently do not frown upon piracy the same way American society does.
Let me ask you another question. Who do you think laws are made for? If you answer "criminals", you are dead wrong. Laws are made so as to codify our moral and ethical standards as a society, which is why they evolve together with society. They are made for the people who choose to live by them, not those who choose to live outside of them. Nor do they protect anyone (enforcement does, to a limited degree). If I choose to live outside of these self-imposed boundaries, then I would care not one whit about which laws I'm breaking at any specific time. It would not enter my mind whatsoever.
Thus the whole concept of copy protection is flawed to begin with. It assumes that by adopting some technical measure - however severe - and backing it up with a law would stop "criminals" from stealing the publisher's intellectual property. However, pirates don't give a damn about the law (they have chosen to live outside of that boundary), and once you have the actual data (CD) in your possession you will be able to recover it at some point in time if you so chose. Notice that cracks appear from countries that in general do not have the same approach to priacy and theft of IP that the US has, and that is no surprise. The people who crack games in those countries are not even criminals (really, they are not). They are not doing anything that is outside of THEIR societally accepted moral boundaries. Essentially, all those CP schemes, especially inane ones such as SF, are completely misguided from the getgo.
And from yet another angle, just think about this: cracks are available for every single damn software product in the world. Yet, in the US, piracy is simply not rampant; even though you can download Civ4 TODAY completely anonymously and without a chance of getting caught if you wanted to, most people in this country still go and buy it. Why is that, do you think?
) It really is stupid that cracked copies are more stable and easier to use that legal ones.
Let me explain, Starforce is good only because it the new version Starforce 3 is really difficult to crack, and currently it is the only protection scheme that is not bypassed and therefore pirates can't play Starforce 3 protected games, they need to resort to insane methods like unplugging their IDE drives etc. All other protection schemes are already cracked. So, releasing Starforce games is good from the publisher's perspective.
