I don't usually find piracy easy to justify, but considering that EA has been pig-headed to the extreme over the use of SecuROM in its products -- a measure deemed harmful to the enjoyment of the paying consumer -- it's kind of karmic to learn that Spore's piracy levels have been deemed "extraordinary" by by one peer-to-peer research firm.

Spore has been at the center of a big DRM controversy, as its piracy-protection program generated a huge user backlash on Amazon. We also learned that EA's "draconian" level of control limits people to creating only one account per copy of the game. People are understandably angry and upset at Electronic Arts for exerting this kind of dictatorial power over its customers, and it looks like they are doing what they can to punish the publisher.

"The numbers are extraordinary," exclaimed Eric Garland, boss of P2P researcher Big Champagne. "This is a very high level of torrent activity even for an immensely popular game title."

The game has been downloaded 171,402 times since September 1, and users such as "deathkitten" on The Pirate Bay are urging users to add to that figure, claiming that it's "the right thing," to do. The right thing it may not entirely be, but EA was kind of asking for it. If you punish your paying customers by using detrimental DRM, something like this is bound to happen. It also proves that SecuROM doesn't bloody work, either.