I have to disagree with ToJKa on the whole license issues. Copyright means legally that they have duplication/distribution rights, not useage rights.

All copyright means is that users are not allowed to make copies except for personal use (backups) and are not allowed to distribute them.  Doing so is then illegal and is the province of law enforcement and not content owners.

EULA's are still something that is highly controversial and legally dubious. Many countries laws invalidate part or all of the different clauses in them.

Another point of contention is that EULA are contract revisions after the fact and are not available for review until after purchase. Disagreeing to them does not entitle you to a refund (in reality if not in theory) , but renders the product unuseable. This could be interpreted as agreeing under duress.

As for personal backups, yes they are legal (fair use). Perhaps I just didnt express myself clearly. But sharing/selling those backups is illegal.

Hence why most of the world doesn't have such an anti-customer law.

Correct, in principle a program is sold just like a DVD or a book. Copyright law ensures the protection of intellectual property, it is an urban myth that licenses are needed for this.

An EULA is a legal trick invented by clever lawyers. If I sell you a television, you are allowed to do with it what you want. However, if I allow you to use my television, I can enforce a lot of restrictions to it. We could could for example agree that only you can watch it, you won't change the order of TV channels, etcera.

Some greedy software houses wanted more than copyright allows them. They wanted the user to require permission to use software. The trick is simple: Keep ownership of the physical copy. If I allow you to read my book, I can enforce restrictions. So software houses invented "licensed not sold". A software house makes copies of a program, and then licenses those copies.

Software is nothing special here. You can license a book, however, books are often sold, software is often licensed. At least, that is what software houses pretend to, because this construction is extremely atrificial and fragile. If you actually sell a copy of a program, you can no longer enforce your EULA. And actually it is very easy to buy a copy of a program: Just agree with someone to sell it to you: You have a sales agreement.

Wether you have bought a program or licensed it, depends on what both parties agreed in this sales agreement. An invoice is a good proof of such an agreement. If it says "program X", you have bought a program X. If it says "perpetual license to program X", you have not bought a program X.

Most of the above is valid world wide. However, European courts have been a lot more fanatic at rejecting EULA constructions than US courts. The reason is that the law systems of most European countries are based on Roman law, where an agreement has the same status as a signed contract, and is therefore protected by contract law. An European court can simply look at what the invoice states, if no EULA was agreed at the moment of sale, they declare the EULA invalid.

But anyway, EULA's are by definition a weak, fragile legal construction, world wide. They should however, not be confused copyright licenses rather than end-user licenses. Copyright licenses have a strong legal basis, because they give you permission for what you are not allowed to do otherwise. The GNU GPL is such a copyrigth license, read what its author, Eben Moglen has to say about EULA versus copyright license: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html

stardock are using other drm called activation for entrenchment I believe.... similar to DRM but without any nasty side affects

where i am u actually own nothing even if u purchase a house. In the end its all governement leases and that only extends a small way down into theearth on the land u brought.

You don't seem to understand that progress must be gradual or it will not be made at all.

Yes, those are your two options.

DRM=Dumb Reatarded Monkies.

You're going to need to clarify this, because it sounds like you want all your games/etc for free.

I don't consider myself a DRM idealogue, but like a lot of people I've been burned by defective DRM schemes basically giving me a glorified rental, or worse yet an unplayable game.  Why buy it if I can't use it?  It seems anymore I have to do Internet research to find out if the game I'm interested in playing is something that I could, in fact, actually be able to play.

I do think there's a light at the end of the tunnel though.  At the risk of starting a political discussion, I'd say the DRM controversey is a lot like subprime mortgages.  It's fueled by terrible, shortsighted decision-making by clueless manage-by-numbers types, but nobody asks questions as long as the bucks are coming in.  Eventually something disrupts the flow of bucks, then heads start rolling once people realize the monumental stupidity that brought them there.

My biggest gripe about DRM is that it's been used by publishers dishonestly for so long.  DRM, for the most part, has been used almost exclusivley as copy protection.

Like someone else mentioned, copyright laws should be basically enough. But there's a gotcha: Reproduction and transferal.

If I truly "owned" the contents of a book or the contents of a DVD then why can't I make infinite copies and resell them?

Companies spend millions making something they own what they make. But the consumer's rights under copyright laws should also be respected.

The problem is that some companies want to devise or buy ever-more elaborate protection for the investment they've made in their products.  However, they don't consider the moral issue - in protecting their product, they're feeding a desire in some of their consumer base to bypass and disable that protection.

If they're going to protect their investment, they should do it in a way that is actually effective but doesn't put the consumer off the product or make them want to bypass or disable the protection.

None of this is rocket science, but the way executives approach DRM makes me think they're from another planet.

Well of course its not, its economics!

And it is not a moral issue. It is an economic issue. Bad company decisions = lower profits. The problem is, they do not understand the basic economics involved. What they are doing is essentially increasing the price (by adding the grief which comes with DRM) and expecting the demand to increase. In reality this leads to a lower demand, not higher. And since the only added 'price' is grief to the consumer, their income per unit sold does not increase, causing a drop in profits.