I think what really chaps my ass about DRM and by extension, piracy, is that convenience is what really what people want. Gabe Newell of Valve said on stage, wa

I think what really chaps my ass about DRM and by extension, piracy, is that convenience is what really what people want. Gabe Newell of Valve said on stage, way before it was cool and way before everything was being served to you from the cloud, that piracy is not a pricing issue, it's a service one. Steam single-handedly made pirating games just not worth the time, so much so that people were re-buying old games, even ones that they had previously pirated, so that their library could be in one place. Unfortunately, ownership of what your purchase is still very much a heated topic and is more a game-to-game topic for now (ie, I can download and play certain games outside of Steam but other games need external and third-party launchers to be online in order to play). Amazon almost got it right by doing similar, and subsequently dominates the ereader market by making it easy and convenient to buy and download an ebook and have it be in a comfortable and familiar format for all your books. They lost me as a customer the moment I wanted a more capable device and to use that library demanded that I use their Kindle software. Frankly, it's sort of a pain to be a third party ebook reader and even though I have given someone an ebook to read in the past, I had to set it up for them. I would be surprised if ebook piracy was a large portion of ebook consumers since it's more hands-on, though it would not surprise me if it was a growing market share. Although the models are different, there have been similar effects with Spotify and video streaming services. You definitely own nothing in these examples, which I feel is worse but it's also pretty clear that you don't own something where ebooks and video games are arguably lying to you in terms of ownership. You essentially pay to get to play/read without owning anything. Before I move on, Spotify gets a special note here as I almost cancelled my subscription after being tired of their constant UI shifts to be more like a social media platform. Since it's the only place I consume music at the moment, I'm at the mercy of their bad decisions. It's all wrapped up into the same topic because if I drop Spotify, then I'm left with a music accessibility problem. This is the same thing Newell said, I now have a service problem, AGAIN. Thankfully they reverted those changes, but ultimately I feel like my problem has only been postponed. I lament that bandcamp is not more popular. Perhaps this is all anecdotal, but from my perspective, it's very clear to me that piracy is (or will be) making a comeback to all of these industries. DRM is ultimately a losing strategy and can alienate consumers. Platform exclusivity, invasive DRM, juggling apps and subscriptions, companies trying to change their music app into a social media one, etc are all user and consumer hostile. The only shame is that the creators ultimately suffer when consumers get tired of the distributors, particularly musicians and authors.