… is to punish the legitimate user.
Please excuse me while I bang my head against the wall some more.
I installed more capacious hard drives in my computer this weekend. To my immense relief, Photoshop didn’t have to be reauthorized (dealing with Adobe is no fun whatsoever). However, most of my Native Instruments synths don’t work now or are back in demo mode, and the NI registration processes are not merely perversely complex, they don’t even work. Idiots.
You mean Digital Restrictions Management, right? Calling it “rights” management makes it sound like something’s being protected – which isn’t the case given how easy it is to get pirated versions of software without the DRM.
Those of us who are still stupid enough to pay for our software and support the creators are the ones who pay for the DRM, after all, and we’re the ones who are being pursued as plausible thieves for it. And our rights in terms of end-user licenses get more and more eroded as the years go by, so calling it rights management feels like a slap in the face.
DRM is fraud. It’s deliberately and knowingly selling defective merchandise. Taking money on the false pretence that you are ‘buying’ something, whilst actually it remains under the control of its creator. I don’t know where you live and hence what consumer-protection legislation you have, but in such a situation I’d take it back and demand a refund; software which doesn’t run properly is clearly not suitable for the purpose advertised. Always remember; DRM vendors, judged by the standards which have applied to trade in physical property for all of civilization, are criminals.