Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings Studios. has a post up on Penny Arcade on that most fascinating of topics, digital rights management.

That’s a lie, of course. Copy protection is snoozingly boring, and I’m guessing that the public’s interest is much lower than the amount of column inches that bloggers devote to it. On the flip side, Daniel James is a man who dresses like a pirate to work because it’s his company and he can dress however he feels like, so just on that alone you at least have to at least hear him out.

The post is basically “It’s pretty awesome to build a free online game with a persistent world, then building in various mechanisms to let your most enthusiastic fans send you a ton of money to subsidize everyone else. That way you don’t have to worry about anyone stealing your work.”

It’s a business model that works. If you don’t believe me, just ask Penny Arcade. They’ve built a fortune doing essentially the same thing with their free online comic.

And if that’s not what your game is like? Well, then Daniel James invites you to take a close look at his ruffled pirate genitalia. Arr!

The Puzzle Pirates model is a good one that benefits the player and the publisher alike, but I don’t want to have to give up on the single-player experience on the PC. Fortunately Valve seems to be sticking to the PC for things like Portal and the Half-Life 2 episodes, so apparently someone is working on a viable model.

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