Going too far with piracy prevention

Recent examples of intrusive anti-piracy approaches have perhaps cross the line of what's acceptable for piracy control. Consider Microsoft's latest legal issues surrounding its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program, Sony BMG's use of rootkits in its DRM technology, and other vendor technology requiring kernel level modifications. Software providers and software protection vendors need to focus on creating piracy protection that is transparent to the legitimate user audience but, at the same time, raises the level of expertise required to crack it and make it difficult to duplicate across applications.