Imagine you, as a happy user of standard, proprietary software, were told that you should use “free” software, so that you would have the freedom to use and share your software however you wanted. This argument would not convince many people on its own. It would sounds like some niche interest in seeing the source code or something. Today, though, this argument holds a lot more water with people. What do we have to thank for this? Aggressive anti-piracy measures.

Just think about what has happened over the past couple of years. Microsoft and Yahoo have both shut down DRM-based music services, leaving customers only until a certain deadline to do anything they want to with their music. Spore’s release was tainted by massive DRM issues, preventing fans from playing the game and leading to a revolt on Amazon. Microsoft’s own “Genuine Advantage” servers were down for several days last year, incorrectly identifying many legal users as pirates. All of these are examples of failed copy protection, and all of these, though I would rather they never have happened, help validate the case for free software.

Without these specific examples, the arguments for freedom in software would be abstract at best. With these horror stories, though, the argument just makes sense.

We can all hope that eventually these companies realize that overly agressive anti-piracy measures that harm the honest user only help their competition to gain ground.

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