I say we cheer at the success of Stardock's policy then lynch the pirate. Yarrharr!

wouldn't that make him a privateer in SD's eyes?

Piracing is not stealing. That's just some nonsense that the media industry have made up to make it sound so bad.

The definition of theft:

"In the criminal law, theft (also known as stealing) is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent."

For example if I make a copy of my friends coffee cup (which he purchased) and use that copy to drink coffee, would I then be stealing from the original makers of the coffee cup according to the definition above? I think not.

Yamota... What you say about stealing... from that technical definition, you are correct. However, your example with the coffee cup is not correct.

The issue here is that you're NOT buying the software.

You're buying a license to use it.

You may own the physical medium, but not the underlying IP.

Similarly, if you purchase a print of a famous painting, you are not authorized to copy that print and sell/give it to others. You can get rid of your copy any way you choose, but not reproduce it.

You can give someone a copy of your CD, but you can't give them the license to use what's on the disc. And if they can't use it, then why give them a copy at all?

It's the classic "I'm not stealing it I'm borrowing it" again.

Amen to that one G.W.

Now that's what you call a self-answering question.

This is sad, but somehow I ended up the exact opposite. I have two legitimate, licensed copies of DL and only one gets used. Don't ask.

I've tried a few games before buying...this being one of them. And agree that Stardocks approach and honesty as well as their excellent product won me over.

Legally, I suppose this is wrong. Ethically, I'm not so sure. If it's a product worth owning, then the people who worked so hard to produce that product should be compensated. In the case of Gal Civ II, I believe that they have created a great product and deserved my money, even though I didn't need to give them it to play the game. If it were a horrible game that wasn't worth 2 hours of my time, I wouldn't have bought the game, and I don't think I would have felt bad for the producers for having played before paying. I can go to a theater and leave within the first half hour and get my money back. I can return a sweater that doesn't fit me. I can demand a refund if there's a finger in my burger. Until stores will allow me to return used games for being horrible, this is my only avenue for ensuring that I only pay for good quality items.

On the other hand, invasive, annoying anti-piracy measures don't make a lot of sense in any way. I believe their impact on piracy is minimal at best: it's difficult enough to figure out how and where to find pirated games, but after doing that, the extra step of getting a crack to work around the copy protection isn't all that hard...they're usually distributed together. Many pirated games are available as soon as or sooner than the game is released, so it doesn't even help with that. So, the only people a company is hurting with those things is their honest customers who paid for the game, but now have to figure out a way to listen to a CD on their computer while playing it, or have to worry about potentially losing the CD to play. Congrats to Stardock for seeing this, and for showing faith in the public not to abuse their trust.