Next Generation has an article looking at the sometimes overly enthusiastic copy protection schemes used in PC games. Here's a taster:

Last year, my work PC suddenly began blue-screening (crashing) any time I popped an audio CD into either of my two optical drives. I went online and learned that other people were having this problem and that it appeared to be StarForce-related. Deleting my StarForce-protected games did nothing. I had to run a StarForce-removal utility before my system - filled only with legal, licensed software - could play audio CDs again.

StarForce Technologies, the company that makes StarForce, seems to think that problems like mine aren't real - or that, if they are, they're happening only to pirates. Not too long ago, they even launched a contest on their website (www.star-force.com) called "Prove It!" If you could prove to them that StarForce had physically damaged your optical drive (a long-standing internet rumor), SFT would pay you $10,000. According to them, no one proved it.

The contest was a bit of a red herring, though, because I don't think StarForce is physically damaging drives. My guess is that the rumor was started by people who were having problems similar to mine, but who were unable to resolve them because they didn't know how to fully remove StarForce.

And why don't people know how to do that? I have to lay the blame at the feet of certain game publishers. Companies that use potentially problem-causing anti-piracy software could do a much better job of getting out in front of these sorts of issues and helping customers resolve them. (Including a FAQ sheet in each game box would go a long way.) As it stands, gamers sometimes run into issues, have no idea why, they can't return the game they just bought because their store doesn't accept returns (because retailers are also concerned about losing money to piracy), and in the end a lot of people are needlessly left out in the cold.