I voted not to include Softwrap, and here's why I made my choice. Keep in mind I am speaking only from opinion, and not in direct response to anybody so far.
Softwrap is Digital Rights Management software, and as I understand it, being on both sides of the argument in different cases. I feel, for example, music recorded from sources like radio or streaming websites is acceptable for personal use should you desire to do so. The media industry has time and time again warned us that doing this will destroy the industry overnight. I hardly believe that my watching The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers at 4 PM after school on a tape when I was six doomed Saban Entertainment and Fox TV to failure. And I continue to believe that my interest of getting low quality audio from streaming or live broadcasts will not doom their respective companies. The argument that it reduces sales is often brought around with line graphs of declining sales, and then when you go to check the sources, they're never from a neutral party, but some pet company owned by the arguing company. My own judgement, which is by my own opinion and views, is to see if said company is still there or not. Power Rangers is about to go through a re-release in 2010 to start over and begin milking the cash cow again from children again, and Fox is a media monster that spawned several other cable-only channels. They seem to be doing fine, and I feel my taping and re-watching of those old shows never hurt them enough to collapse. In fact, every company I have ever 'pirated' from by taping a showing or recording a song on the radio has never gone under. In fact, quite the opposite in my experience. Westwood Studios and Pumpkin Studios are long dead, while they had the two games I was a frenzied fan of (Red Alert 2 and Warzone 2100 respectively).
On the other side of it, there is a certain respect one should have for software based on the depth of quality it brings. In my experience there is only ONE redeeming value to DRM and that is the same value as that of a screen door instead of an open doorway. Good people stay out of my house unless I let them in, they don't need the screen door to know that. They have good manners. Now the same can be said for bad people, they will come in if it's a screen door or a steel wall, but it may not even be through a door, but they will march right on in once somebody figures out how. As such, there is always these two kinds of people, the same in any argument of legal measure. Again, this is my experience, as I've been involved in a psychology experiment or two on just such subject matter, and the results always show there is at least some percentage who are good and who are bad. The real value of DRM in my eyes is to keep the good people honest. A good person may not enter my house without my permission, but they may duck in to peek if I'm there or not. While they're inside, they may see my sandwich on the table and take it. Had I the screen door, they may have thought twice about checking on me, and I may still have my sandwich. Now, this unfortunately brings me to my point of taking it away again, because now that there is a door available, something to stop the Bad Guy, now he'll stand there, draw attention to my door, and bring his friends to break into my room to steal my sandwich. Now instead of just the one guy who walked in and took my sandwich, there's ten guys breaking down my door, and telling people how. So, not only is my sandwich that day taken, but people continue to steal my sandwich as people now have a challenge to undergo to 'earn' my sandwich. This doesn't entitle them to it, but now its become more of a game.
In the juncture of YoYoGames taking up Game Maker, a change was made in my eyes. It stopped being a community project and turned into a product. This is ok, it's a natural evolution. But the issue is that with more advertising and publicity, there is more people coming. More good people, and more bad people. It also means more money to turn the DRM into a bigger game. Already, I'm willing to bet, there are people waiting for Game Maker 8 to come out, and whatever DRM is comes packed with, will be broken with vim and vigor and inside two weeks, you can go to any popular prirating site and grab it.
That said, Softwrap is a company that banks its business on people being dishonest good guys, as bad people will still get in, and it founds itself on a false principle.
Softwrap protects products from piracy and allows publishers to offer...
The emphasis is theirs and theirs alone. Because its a lie. As I'm sure a lot of the members here know, but won't tell, Softwrap didn't do anything, except deliver a product that had erratic behavior and often reset itself. As a person who's paid for the software three times now, and I warn all of you now to never use hotmail as your primary e-mail, and likely to pay a fourth time, it bothers me that a person who stole it gets better uptime than I do. For that reason, I say forgo the DRM altogether, and focus on delivering a product that we can trust. After all, if it's easier, cheaper, and less hassle-free to go pirate the software than to buy it, what reason does the already morally dubious rationalize to have to pay for it. People think they are entitled to software. I hate to say it that way, but its how they see it.
All in all, forgo it, please, and give the good guys less of a headache with these erratic DRM failures. And once more, these are opinions, I've backed them up as much as I feel inclined to, and will not argue with anybody about them. These are just my thoughts on the matter.
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