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Steam and the Mac App Store are good examples of how all of these different factors can work if applied right. Why can't these companies understand that I WANT TO PAY THEM. If you treat me like a criminal with a purchased copy of the game but I can get one without all the DRM from a torrent then it's really tempting to just go with the torrent. I don't pirate however there have been times that I felt so abused by the DRM that I can understand why people do.

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The author mentions this a little in the article, but I feel like they probably could have expanded on that point - the "$I" cost of piracy can change depending on the seller's track record. As noted recently in the Oatmeal comic about pirating Game Of Thrones (and Andy Ihnatko's response), the state of piracy is such that, effectively, all efforts to make piracy harder, make piracy more appealing.

I wonder how much pain these various industries will need to endure before they realize that the solution is to stop punching themselves in the face.

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