That's right Chives,they didn't have any piracy protection whatsoever.
The dreamcast was an excellent console capability-wise,but the games cost copious amounts of money,and the console itself cost the modern day equivalent of 1500$.Also not many people used the internet back then,and if they did it was EXTREMELY expensive.....and slow.
If the dreamcast had been cheaper and release before the word of the PS2 came out,they could have DESTROYED sony,but the timing was wrong,console was too expensive,games were too expensive,it wasn't well advertised,timing was wrong,and it all added up to FAIL.
I remember when I used to live in Dublin,when the dreamcast came out,game shops stopped stocking the console,games or anything else to do with the console,they had ordered 100 consoles in and in 5 days not one console or game was sold.