Getting grifted

So EA was going to ratchet up their disdain for people who pay them money for the privilege of playing Mass Effect or Spore on the PC, by using a copy protection scheme that involved online authentication checks every 10 days.  For some inexplicable reason, people got upset at this prospect.

EA subsequently backed off and is now apparently only going to use a more traditional form of customer abuse.  Their change of heart came, apparently, after listening "very closely" to their fans.

Not closely enough.

Listen closely to this:  I.  Hate.  You.

SecuROM doesn't work.  Period.  Using it just makes you look stupid.  Putting it in your games just makes me hate you.  If you want to be stupid and annoying, go do it on your own time, not with products for which I've GIVEN YOU MONEY!!

Astute observers have already identified the true motive behind EA's actions - namely to strike a strategic blow to the used game market, which the big publishers view (through their greed-tinted goggles) as a big ol' giant pile of lost revenue.

Which also makes them look stupid.  And makes me hate them.  Every transfer of ownership of a used game does NOT equate to a lost sale of the same game new at retail.  People buy used games because games are too expensive.  It's the same reason people want to buy songs instead of albums.  But just like the music industry, the mainstream game publishing industry wants desperately to establish a market that allows them to charge you money not just once or twice, but every single time you sit down to enjoy your media.  The concept of 'ownership' is antithetical to their megalomaniacal greed.

And crap like the repeated SecuROM authentication checks are just incremental steps in that direction - where consumers have slowly lost the right to actually own anything.  So every idiot that brushes this stuff off as just tilting at windmills simply doesn't understand the big picture.  They say, "what's the big deal, I'm never without an internet connection, who cares if the game dials the mothership every other week?"  It's not about dialing the mothership, it's about the inexorable erosion of your rights as a consumer.

It's never really about this little annoyance or that little inconvenience.  It's about digging your heals in for a fight against the accumulation of all of those little things that one day measure up to everything.

The powers that be for this battle aren't interested in any given inch, they want to take enough inches to eventually add up to a mile, without anyone ever making enough of a fuss to disrupt the plan.