Re: What´s the point of the new copy protection?
 

I doubt there is enough market there to bother explaining things to illegal users. And Im not sure Id want them around here anyway.

Re: What´s the point of the new copy protection?
 

The article was using skewed results. While it's true that most music pirates spend more money on music than average, they're not spending it on the music they already have. It's the same with games - pirates do tend to buy more software, but either buy games they haven't yet downloaded or else wait until the title is reduced from release price. Either way, they're not usually in anyones target audience.
But you already have a demo for Dominions 3. Most shareware works on the principle you've described, but the problem in these cases is that what you already have is essentially the full game, with the protection simply restricting certain parts of the code. It's a lot easier to pirate the game, since all you need do is remove or fool the protection. With a demo system such as Dominions, where the demo is a standalone product, then you add a further obstacle to pirates as they also need to obtain a full version of the game.
Pure speculation. There's not really any figures to support the suggestion, although those studies which do exist tend to support the opposite - the majority of pirates won't pay for software they already have.
In fact, the most reliable study I have seen suggests that the pirated copy has a 'diminished' value. Most regular pirates (regular as in regularly pirate games) tend to treat the games as more of a throwaway item than those who purchased it legitimately. It was used by Toshiba (I think) as evidence that blank optical media wasn't an inducement to piracy.
Nowhere near the amount that even a small legitimate source could provide though. Even the smaller gaming websites tend towards a readership of hundreds.
Your only taking a loss if the person was going to buy the game anyway. If they had no intention of doing so (or were unaware of the game) it's not a loss, since you had nothing to gain. As for helping sales, I suspect you'd lose far more sales to people pirating the game themselves than you'd gain from the odd few people who'd choose to buy the game instead, especially if the game was widely available in pirated format.
It depends a lot on the type of protection used and when you check though. Sometimes it's impossible to run the copy protection without starting the game first, other times you run the copy protection before you allow the game to launch. I know Dominions 2 performed the check when you tried to launch a game, presumably this is the same. I'd hazard a guess that it's an addition to the key check which the game already does when launching a new game (the one which checks if anyone else connecting to the game is using the same CD key).

Re: What´s the point of the new copy protection?
 

I have to agree. I think it's probably a buggy copy protection idea.

Re: What´s the point of the new copy protection?
 

Archonsod, it's not that uncommon to infringe copyright and then purchase the thing whose copyright was infringed shortly thereafter: a friend or a website recommends a band, you download the album, listen to it, buy it if you like it (after a check on riaaradar.com to make sure it's safe). Or, a game comes out, looks interesting, doesn't have a demo; you download it, try it out, buy it if you like it. Or, a software tool comes out that seems like it might be useful, but you're not sure; you download it, if it does what you need, you pony up for it.

Willie Wanker sitting in his parents' basement trying to download every single piece of software that shows up on the bittorrent tracker of his choice obviously doesn't fit this category. Plenty of people do, though. I realize I'm venturing a little far afield, since Dominions has a pretty nice demo and thus it's hard to justify doing this, but it's not inconceivable that someone might download the demo, decide it looks interesting, but not be convinced that it merits $55 without seeing the endgame. Admittedly, probably a small category...

I don't have any problem with Dominions having copy protection. I do think it would make more sense if it made it clear that it was copy protection, but I don't think it's a big deal (for reasons that lots of people have already mentioned). It's obviously pretty bad if legit users are bit by it... I'm more writing this rambling response in disagreement with Archonsod's assertion that people don't buy things that they already have. I completely agree with his other statement that people tend to treat things they got for free with the respect they'd have for something that's not worth much. This is actually, at least for some, good motivation to buy something that you've already got - spending money on something is a good way to induce yourself to dedicate time to appreciating it.

Re: What´s the point of the new copy protection?
 

I don't mind copy protection as long as it doesn't hurt legitimate users, which it often does...

For instance, Starforce has kept me from buying several games. It's malware and I wont install it.