EA Teaches Customers How to Pirate Their Software

If I hadn't read it on arstechnica, I wouldn't have believed it. Seems that EA distributed copies of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 with incomplete CD keys. To correct the problem, they are teaching customers how to guess their CD key.

"There is currently a workaround that may allow you to bypass this issue," the entry reads. "Since you have the first 19 characters of the code already, you can basically try 'guessing' the last character. To do this, simply enter your existing code, and then for the last character, try the letters A-Z, and then the numbers 0-9. You should eventually get the right combination, and be able to play the game. If this does not work, you can follow the instructions below."

Isn't that encouraging--no, teaching--piracy? If so, then why even have a DRM at all?

Update: EA has updated the entry on their website to no longer include the quoted information.