Comment Number:	539814-00424
Received:	1/10/2009 7:00:55 PM
Organization:
Commenter:	Casey Miller
State:	CA
Agency:	Federal Trade Commission
Rule:	FTC Town Hall to Address Digital Rights Management Technologies - Event Takes Place Wednesday, March 25, 2009, in Seattle
Attachments:

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Comments:

DRM is necessary. Allowing blatant piracy of software and digital entertainment is obviously harmful to the industry, and needs to be kept in check. However, the way that 99% of companies choose to go about DRM is at best pointless and at worst a blatant infringement on the rights of the consumer. Good DRM (such as Valve software's Steam service) should be seamless and convenient for the consumer without automatically treating each of its users like a criminal and essentially selling a broken product. Stuff like the recent controversy with EA's game Spore, where the software only allows you to install it a limited number of times, should be considered nothing less than fraud on the part of the company for selling a product that they KNOW will punish legitimate consumers for no reason.