Simple. Because to refute his statements, you need an equally sound argument. And lets be totally honest here. The same phenomena is apparent when ever GPL gets argued against by the hoards of people who seem to suddenly believe in freedom being a context free word. Unless it applies to their code, which is the only code that is allowed to be kept secret.

What you are seeing is feigned confusion, character assassination, and wilful ignorance.

Reality.. In RMS's world view. They are out of business. And have no way of selling a product to people based on lock ins and artificial exclusivity.

He took the name of the holy one in vain. He said unpositive things about Apple. What more do you want.
Walk into a fundamentalist church service with a "Jesus was Gay" tee shirt, and you get a similar reaction.
Surely you have noticed how poorly pod people take any criticism of the precious? Or the precious's daddy..

Make sure you also boycott products that use Samsung parts..

For the same reason someone needs to make instruments for them to play, and microphones for them to sing into, and provide equipment for them to be recorded on. Nobody can do it all.

Not all musicians are able to do all things all along the track from creation of equipment to releasing the finished song. In fact, nobody can do it all.

To follow your logic, why do singers sing songs that they did not write themselves?

Mixing other work into something new is a musical style. Personally, it does nothing for me, but that does not mean I can dismiss it as worthless to anybody.

Which would be a great comeback.. If this were a patent case.

And then shrug, and fire up the soldering iron anyway.

Because only shitty movies are successful? Or doers your inverse snobbery equate good with art house stuff that gets a showing at a film festival, and nothing is ever heard of them again?

Peter Jackson has made some really good movies. Brain Dead was hilarious, The LOTR trilogy is great. King King, watched once, and it was ok.

Tim Burton does some great work. Dark but entertaining too. And beautifully visualised. Are they obscure and penniless? I'm sure I could find many many more who are making enough money to satisfy your idea of success, but still do good work, not just flash in the pan bargain bin in six months movies.

And if he enjoys writing them, he has fulfilled the purpose of the exercise.

If the only way you can assess worth is financially, then the failing is yours.

Kind of like NPCs and henchmen.

And the inconvenient to your argument third type. The ones who ignore then hype, don't dig their heels in irrationally, and make their own minds up. So they buy what ever the hell they want.

Like it or not. You have just outed yourself as one of the first group.

Why? Games are active participatory interactive devices. Depending on genre, they require the exercise of problem solving abilities, hand to eye coordination, strategic planning, memory, delegation, and I'm sure many other skills. Passive.. No way. Do nothing and you lose.

Watching sports on TV however.. That is super passive. Getting emotionally caught up in an event you have absolutely no ability to control.. How weird is that? Yet if you watch any sport with fans of that sport, they get excited when their team scores, or when someone drives their car around in a circle faster than someone else.

Again.. Why? Many MMORPG systems pretty much require you to be part of a group. Sitting in a pub laughing and chatting, or siting in a room alone laughing and chatting over the internet.. The only difference is the physical proximity. And if you can't relate to people except when in close physical proximity, then perhaps you have a problem. How is playing an RPG with a few people you will likely never meet, any different to the typical paintballing weekend corporate "team building" exercise?

I have a few close friends I have never physically met. Some go back over 10 years. Are they to be considered of less value because I can't go to the pub with them? Is a friend crying on my shoulder because she has just broken up with her boyfriend any less of a personal interaction because it happens through email? Should I have felt less worry during the Brisbane floods because the friend who lives there is one I only know because we "met" in an email group?

Someone on the other end of the internet is no less a person than someone who lives a block away.

If these are one's ONLY social interaction. Then yes. There is a problem. Atypical behavior usually is. But the game causing the problem.. Sorry.. I don't buy it. A symptom.. Certainly. If taken to excess, agreed 100%. But nobody is actually arguing otherwise. The guy who spends months playing WOW or something is someone with a real and serious problem. We all freely acknowledge that. We all present this as a cast iron case of someone with a problem.

Or the building of sets of cards in poker, or the conquest by moving little playing pieces in chess. Or the search for the next piece when making a jigsaw, or the obsessive search for words that fit in a crossword puzzle. Games are repetitive. It is part of their nature.

Can you play a musical instrument? Good enough to let anybody hear you? Did you just pick it up one day and find you could do it? or did it take months or years of practicing the same song over and over to get good?
Do you limit yourself to listening to a song only once?
Ever make filled pasta? Put the filling in, fold over the pasta, seal the pasta, repeat.. Quite therapeutic actually. Once you get a rhythm going, you can just daydream. Your hands go on autopilot after a while.

Knitting? A repetitive sequence of knots made with two sticks.

Gardening? Plant the seeds, weed the beds, water the seeds. repeat. Yet this is a therapy often recommended to people who are suffering from stress.

Repetition is not in it's self a bad thing either.

From personal experience, a quick game of some FPS does wonders for my stress levels. I get to shoot people with no consequences, and they get to get back up unharmed a few seconds later.
If I had no such outlet, what would I do with my anger? Do you think suppression is a healthy way of dealing with it? Because you can't always solve the problem that makes you angry. Screaming at your boss about what a cretin he is tends to get you fired. Shooting some grunt character in a game while PRETENDING he is your boss however, allows you to shoot your boss in effigy with nobody being harmed.

Internalized suppressed anger festers. Externalized anger can be dealt with, and removed. Role playing, writing letters to people, or even aspects of your own personality that you are never going to send. Drawing pictures to caricature aspects of your personality that you would like to be more in control of.. All well established effective psychotherapy devices. See the link yet?
Perhaps the psychology researchers are reacting like the Christian church in some cases. Think they are so against gambling because they see it as wrong? Nope.. They originally disapproved, according to a game history researcher, because at one time, things like casting dice and drawing lots was a decision making tool for them. They saw games of chance as trivializing their tools.

As far as I remember, "Settled out of court" in this case, meant " Oh Shiiiiiit!!! We could lose the rights to Windows as too generic to trademark!! QUICK BUY EM OFF".

Meh.. They arrived late back then too...

In what way is it political? Other than as a poor device to cast the opposing view as unreasonable?

You accept an inferior product that you need to unlock. I reject the same product as unsatisfactory. Political.. No. I just don't buy shit.

So I'll ask you again. Do you carry a key to your front door, or do you pick the lock?

And you can easily learn how to pick the lock of your front door, so why do you carry a key?

Fools break into their own property. Smart people make sure they own the key as well as the lock.

Break DRM, and someone comes up with nastier DRM.
Reject DRM, and it becomes too expensive to use.

Exactly.

Or to rephrase it.. How much easier is it to part an iFanboy from their money at an abnormally high markup?