Piracy is *a* problem but not *the* problem

I recently stumbled across two excellent articles discussing the issue of piracy primarily in the gaming market (with some mention of the music industry). The first one written by Rob Fahey discusses ways that publishers can defeat pirates by offering strong incentives for purchasing games legitimately as opposed to combating piracy directly through restrictive, customer-unfriendly protections.

The reality is that when pirates are offering a better user experience than you are, your business model is broken - and rather than punishing your loyal customers, or whinging to national governments in the hope that they'll cover your backside with unpopular, civil liberties-infringing legislation, you need to fix your business model. Or find a new job.

The second article points out that piracy is never the sole reason (or even a big reason) a game sells poorly; it points out how many games today sell quite well despite lacking any form of copy protection.