I just purchased Spore today and have been having great fun with it.

No, not playing the game. Neutering the DRM.

SecuROM has become much more invasive than it used to be. It’s become a pain in the neck to eliminate, partially because it now locks the administrator account out (!) of its registry keys, requiring the use of special software to remove them. Even without the idiotic 3 installation limit, I just don’t want it on my system.

It is proving difficult to eliminate the DRM and keep Spore fully functional, however.

I don’t condone piracy, but I feel bad about giving this company my money for software that essentially relies on the presence of a computer virus for correct operation. I probably should have just pirated the game.

But then where does it end? I wish to compensate the developers and innovators who made this work possible, but not the publisher, who served merely to tarnish that work. I don’t feel it justified to deprive both for the depravity of one.