Good morning, Dave. Your name is just one small piece of information that could have been swiped from your computer had you tried playing anything containing the Sony rootkit of 2005. Officially approved by Sony, trying to play the CDs on a computer running Microsoft Windows would automatically and secretly install a rootkit which affected the computer's functionality (even functions completely unrelated to the original CD) and opened various security holes.
This was all done in the name of digital rights management. In the post-Napster world, publishers have been scrambling for a way to keep people from digitally stealing their property. And what it usually results in is tricky and often annoying hoops that a consumer must jump through after legally purchasing a product. Though DRM was initially created to control the sharing of music, it has since been applied to many games. And of course, this has spawned much controversy.
This is an issue which has no simple answer. In fact, you'll find that gamers' opinions on DRM range from utter contempt to complete approval. The reason for this is that there we're at the beginning of a new era. While digital property has existed for decades, we now live in a time where it's virtually effortless to transfer large quantities of data. Surely, publishers should have a way to protect their property from being stolen. Yet this shouldn't be at an additional expense to the consumer, and it certainly should not be a gateway for malicious practices such as Sony's rootkit fiasco.
