Yeah, anytime someone mentions just punishes users, I’m reminded of the time this was really driven home for me.

I was working for a company that did developed tools that worked adjacent to other software and needed to install one piece of software to test my component intended for that program. After using that software at work, I decided to also use it to generate data for a personal project I was doing for fun at home and pirated it.

At work, we obviously used a legit copy and had a business partnership with the company. Their DRM required a dongle and running server software on the machine with the dongle that would issue licenses to clients. I forget the specifics, but we had some problems and it took a few weeks of emailing back and forth with someone from support before I was actually able to get the software running.

At home, I just ran a crack and had it running the same day I decided to use it.

All their fancy DRM just turned into a pain in the ass for the legitimate use and a complete non-issue for those doing what it was intended to prevent in the first place.