Good Old Games, otherwise known as gog.com, is a service that sells older video games by download at a considerable discount. They’re the good guys, fighting to keep great games from aging past their glory days as computer technology marches on. They’re also waging battle against the copyright cartels and the scourge of Digital Rights Management, or DRM. DRM is what stops you from playing the games you bought, with your own money, when the Playstation Network goes down. DRM is why you couldn’t play Portal 2 when you bought it on launch. Gamespot has the story.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that gog.com’s business model relies on older games being available without remote authorization or other third party DRM schemes. Hard to sell a game that won’t unlock because the unlocking server went offline two years ago. That said, DRM is evil and should be beaten down with a flaming baseball bat every time it rises, hissing, from the foetor and the muck.