Which is why they spend that money on some half baked DRM that doesn't work either. I would rather they spend the money on the problem - Pirates - and drop the DRM schemes.

Their problem isn't pirates, it's that not as many people are buying their product as they'd prefer. This is what they need to set about addressing, and going after pirates simply isn't particularly effective when compared to other ways that the resources involved could be used.

Are you really so delusional?
In the past, the "industry" has tried to:
make VHS recordings illegal
make ripping CDs to mp3s illegal
make copying CDs and DVDs for archives illegal
force us to accept DRM and tracking for our music
None of the changes in the "industry" have been motivated by the industry themselves. Why would they? They would make much more money if we could only get our content buying CDs and DVDs.
In fact, in this case I would credit piracy for offering a superior product and forcing the record industry to be somewhat ethical in it's respect for fair use

Once we stop murder, rape, child abuse, arson, assault, REAL theft, and a host of other really meaningful problems in our society, then I'm sure we can all rally behind the RIAA and MPAA and the IFP to finally stop this piracy thing once and for all.

To avoid the issues we have with the quoting system I am posting a new post.
Yesterday:
Are you really so delusional? No not at all.
In the past, the "industry" has tried to:
make VHS recordings illegal -- Lost that battle
make ripping CDs to mp3s illegal -- Lost that battle
make copying CDs and DVDs for archives illegal -- Lost that battle
force us to accept DRM and tracking for our music -- Losing this battle - Technically its
not your music, it is the artists music. You have just purchased the right to play and listen
to it and in a perfect world, anywhere and on any device of your choosing.
None of the changes in the "industry" have been motivated by the industry themselves. Why would they? They would make much more money if we could only get our content buying CDs and DVDs.
In a capitalistic society that is the motivation of business - to make as much profit as they can. I totally disagree that they would make more money from CD / DVD only sales. That is the point of GOG. Showing that DRM Free Digital media is profitable as long as you can keep the pirates out of the equation as much as possible. To see a company that's trying to address the pirate issue directly, (read the artice from Aliasalpha's first post) should be given credit for trying to address it. After all we hear the mantra from the industry that DRM is needed to solve the pirate issue - when infact we know that is not the case. If they start to focus on a direct method of dealing with these pirates, maybe they will slowly come to understand our point. DRM Free games at a good price is profitable. We need to stand behind it or stop saying it.
In fact, in this case I would credit piracy for offering a superior product and forcing the record industry to be somewhat ethical in it's respect for fair use.
I don't think I could blindly agree to the above statement.
Once we stop murder, rape, child abuse, arson, assault, REAL theft, and a host of other really meaningful problems in our society, then I'm sure we can all rally behind the RIAA and MPAA and the IFP to finally stop this piracy thing once and for all.
Piracy is real theft. I am not saying we need to rally behind these groups. Read my posts without the negative bias and all I am saying is acknowledge their move to actually pursue the pirates directly which has been lacking in lieu of poor DRM schemes.

Actually piracy is copyright infringement and does not fall under "theft" legally so no, it's NOT real theft.
In any case, it's important to see the difference between physically stealing and copying without permission. The first will directly harm the owner, the second may not harm the owner at all.
When it come to piracy, the issue is so complex that people can't just say "it's bad" or "it's good". Piracy does mean lost profits (but how much is insure) but on the other hand, it also boosts profits which rarely gets mentioned (which I won't get into but it does have its positive effects).
In the end, of course piracy means lost money. I just don't believe it's as bad as they make it sound. Why? Because I'd have to be a fool to believe companies with shareholders when they make up excuses why their products didn't sell that well. They ALWAYS try to shift the blame away from them to appease the shareholders. DRM seems it's just that: trying to appease the shareholders without looking at the long-term picture.
The fact remains that a good game sells. Make it long enough, give it replay value and you can bet people won't feel cheated. However, if you're going to release a game that can be completed in a single afternoon with a paper thin manual, rehashed gameplay, a corny story and no editor or replay value ... well what do you expect?

Why is this piracy stuff getting so much news lately? It's not like it hasn't been around for, ohhh ... the ENTIRE history of the personal computer software industry!
Bill Gates famous open letter
Microsoft was born in an era before there was any custom to purchase personal computer software, and yet seemed to do okay. :p
Has something changed?

Well unless you've been living under a rock, you may have noticed that anti-piracy measures are becoming increasingly draconian. In the 90's you had code wheels and manual checks - annoying but acceptable. Now you completely depend on publishers when you buy a game:
a) patches are more and more often done automatically with no offline patches being available --> if servers go down, you're screwed
b) online games rely on servers run by publishers with no direct IP connection possible anymore and more often LAN supports is absent --> again, if these servers go down, you're screwed
c) DRM games need online activation --> again, if servers go down, you're screwed
d) Ubisoft/EA's system needs a constant connection --> .... well you get it by now - servers, down, screwed
On the other hand, I can still play a 30 year old PC game because all security is contained in the game box and not on some remote server which may well go down.

LOL, you've got rose colored glasses my friend. Some of those vintage copy protection schemes are down right evil. I have a ton of early 80's CRPG's on decaying media that I can't make 100% copies of. Custom operating systems and very low level control of the floppy controller. Disks formats your controller can read but not write (custom duplication machines). Programs being senstive to track alignment. Freaking sharks with lasers shooting defects onto your floppies so that the program can find bad blocks at the right places. I can use Pirate copies for some of the more common ones, but they tend to have obnoxious intros, and not work 100% (what 16 year old is going to spend 100+ hours to QA their crack before releasing it?) Some even cut content so that a 3 floppy game can be stuffed onto one.
I'm really not sure what to do with them. The next time I pop them into a drive, the head might just brush the magnetic coating off the mylar. It's all good though, the cloth map that came with that 30 year game is damn pretty! ;)
Actually, I don't think we're in disagreement. I too think things are getting worse. My post is more of question as why these new measures are necessary when piracy has always been a constant for the platform. Why does Settlers 7 need an always on connection when q3a got away with a CD key?

I like your points - Lets take them a bit further. After actually paying for a product, say food from your example, you are free to enjoy it or even give it away. However, by giving it away you do not receive anything from the food. This is not the case with digital media. Some believe they can purchase and give away while retaining the benefit of the original. Some would even go so far as to not even purchase and just obtain via a torrent site something for free which they have no right to have. If I purchase something I want to be able to use it on the device of my choosing and whenever and whereever I like. It is those who subscribe to the give it away and retain possession or the do not pay for it crowd that are causing my rights as a legitamate owner to be infringed on by DRM. My point is to go after these "Pirates" so that the companies will lesson the DRM and allow me as a legitamate customer to fully utilize my rights.

Ummm, the post i was quoting was you congratulating the industry from providing the wonderful technological changes .
We don't need to thank or credit these industries for anything because they did their utmost to try to make sure we couldn't just run our purchased music anywhere. I'm not going to give credit to companies for following the law. The only reason they respect our fair use freedoms is because they were upheld by court.
We should be crediting our respective judiciaries for this.
Do you not believe that pirated music/video/games are competitive products? Of course they are. And competition breeds change. It may be illegal competition, but it is quite clear that where piracy went, the industry has followed, the most obvious case being DRM-free music.
You are missing the point.
We will never "stop" piracy just as we've never stopped WAY more serious crimes. The fact that there is still rape and child abuse and murder in the world doesn't mean everyone treates me as a criminal when I walk down the street. I don't have to call the police everytime a leave my house, nor get special permission to catch a bus.
Companies should realise that just like in society, a level of illegal activity is always expected, and stop acting like a police state where everyone is treated like criminals. It seems to work for all the other aspects of life, doesn't it? They should also realise that piracy is pretty low on the list of issues in society that I should care about.
The idea that we have campaigns to stop piracy is just ridiculous.

How do people who pirate some copyright material DIRECTLY impact your rights? They don't. Your rights aren't impacted directly in any way if someone gets a copy for free or not. That's the whole point of a public good. You pay what you feel is an amount that is valuable to you.
That there is an indirect cost or externality (i.e DRM, "loss of revenue" to copyright holders) is entirely up to the determination of the producer. If the producer (i.e. copyright holder) chooses to waste money and time on implementing DRM and hunting down pirates, then of course there is a cost transferred to you. If there DRM artificially restricts your ability to consume your product, then that is fault of the producer. If producers decide that chasing down casual piracy is actually a waste of time, then there is no additional coast.

You are right that this is a big difference and a problem. But neither DRM nor "going after" pirates are ever really going to make piracy go away. It's inherent of the ability to make lossless copies of digital data. They can close ed2k servers or torrent sites or trackers all they want, there is always something new going to pop up where people share their files. Even under the unrealistic assumption that they could ban piracy and file sharing from the Internet, people would just go back to sharing in local networks or swapping burned discs.
The problem is that some people obviously don't care whether they have the pirated copy or an original, which under my analysis means that the original doesn't offer them anything they deem worth their money. Piracy is just a fact and it's not going away, Ubisoft were only the most recent to prove that you can't prevent piracy without hurting your actual customers - and further degrading the quality of your expensive products. If you want to get pirates to buy your game, offer something that you can only get with the original copy, that they will just want to have. It's a bit more difficult for digital distribution, but not impossible.
This is not my opinion alone, and the realisation is far older than the current DRM controversy. I read an interview with someone from Infocom, way back in the early 80s. One of the questions was why Infocom disks were not copy-protected. The man said that they have soon figured out that copy protections simply are a concept that does not work, and that their approach to the piracy problem - offering goodies in the game box that you simply cannot get with a copy - works much better and is more rewarding to the buyers of the game, hence making more of them spend their money on it. (Does someone have a source for this article? I'm sure I read it on the web somewhere.)

This. One of the biggest problems with DRM or lawsuit approaches to piracy is that regardless of whether such measures are effective or not in deterring piracy it typically doesn't result in increased sales, and often has the exact opposite effect. It seems the problem is that many of the folks caught up in the heavy-handed methods of combating piracy have lost sight of just why they wanted piracy to go away to begin with.

Hey horse.... how are you......ohhh still dead..... /kicks the horse yet again (been a long day so im gonna go ahead and vent so... if you dont want to read it is cool)
CANT SIUHUIAD SLEEP!!!!!!!!!!!
Edit removed my vent.... feel somewhat better......... leaving the comment about beating a dead horse.... fdhskjhddsah tomorrow is gonna suck

Acknowledges sound of akwater beating dead horse in Iraq. . . =)
Edit: removed DRM since it is impossible to tell which dead horse akwater was beating