I think it is ethical for companies to have DRM. All of these companies are simply trying to protect their work like anyone else would and attempting to combat piracy. Most people that are against DRM probably have never made any digital goods and have had to deal with piracy affecting their sales. It is also unethical to circumvent these DRM especially when it is for the purpose of redistributing the new DRM free version. If a person is attempting to bypass the DRM for their personal ease of use or because the existence of the DRM has made it impossible for them to actually use the bought product then I think that is acceptable.
The industry as a whole should stop assuming that piracy is one-to-one lost sale. Every person that pirates a game would not necessarily buy it otherwise if piracy was not an option but a small percentage of them definitely would. The problem that DRM brings then is that only has it recently been able to actually stop people from making cracks specifically the ones using Denuvo but otherwise it is a nuance like captcha can be to everyday users. An option to combat piracy other than DRM then is a change in the industry like the rise of streaming services for music and video media with the potential for games becoming bigger and bigger.
When it comes to the reverse engineer that pirates go through, they are in fact breaking the DMCA which states “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” I enjoy doing some reverse engineering from time to time just out of curiosity. A long that same line I believe that at least researchers and developers should be allow to prove and reverse engineer software so that they can learn from it. If it wasn’t for these developers testing and searching for bugs and flaws on different software we would still be vulnerable to things like “Heartbleed” or “Shellshock” which might have not come directly from reverse engineering but similar flaws could be found.
On the other side an end user should be able to reverse engineer if it means that they can make it work “better” for themselves as long as there is no monetary gain or they are not getting an un fair advantage over other people like cheats in a game. The end user should still consider the potential security problems that may come from modifying any sort of software either on a desktop computer or on a car since they should not put the lives of others in danger. Even when I believe that people should be able to reverse engineer certain systems I still believe that companies should still use DRM. The process so far has led to the development of better DRM for both the end user and the companies which makes everyone happier. Also as we keep getting more involve and making everything digital all forms of cyber security will become more and more important.
Norman Morales 