It sounds petty - hell, it is petty - but the anti-piracy warnings that seem to come standard on all DVDs seriously annoy me. These things can’t be skipped with the “fast forward” or “next scene” functions so I’m forced to be reminded every time I watch a movie that I didn’t actually copy it… presumably if I had copied it, those warnings could have been edited out.

This has been a feature of the PC gaming industry for some time as well. To combat the problem of piracy, game makers started requiring CD keys, or that CDs be left in the drive at all times, or in some extreme cases advanced solutions are implemented which makes things harder for crackers but much worse for legitimate users. Regardless of all this, the games eventually get cracked anyway and the pirates get their game; maybe they just had to wait an extra couple of weeks.

Anyway, the point of this - and this applies to the music industry as well as DVDs and games - is that it sucks to pay for something and then be treated as a potential thief. I recently picked up Galactic Civilizations II (currently $29.95 by the way, awesome deal for a great game) and it’s quite a breath of fresh air. I’ve installed it on my desktop PC and my laptop and I can fire the game up on either completely disc-free. This is how it is supposed to be. The developer even lists this as a feature on its official site:

• “No CD copy protection. Once you install, you never need your CD again. You can even use the included serial # to re-download the entire game from us years from now.”

Brilliant.