Geez was I stupid.

You might find it hard to believe, but its the truth. I've even gone so far as to copy an existing Steam installation, with all its games, onto one of my Linux machines to run with Wine and Steam never even blinked. It did have to verify file integrity of each of the games I tried to run (not all of them work in Wine), but since I have Wine configured to not have access to the network, Steam never needed to go online and reactivate anything.
How do you figure that? Is there any precedent or history of this ever happening with Steam in the 5 years it has been in operation? Have you actually seen the business agreements that Valve has made with other publishers that specify an expiration of distribution rights? What you are saying is little more than a speculative assumption, not based on any facts at all. This is part of what I was saying earlier about Steam getting a bad rap that it doesn't actually deserve.
I may have been incorrect about the "call home" feature initially being enabled in EA's games, there has been so much negative hype about SecuROM 7, I probably got that from some unwarranted rant I read somewhere. However, I am still certain that publishers like EA would prefer and will someday insist on having that enabled. Also I think you may be somewhat mistaken on how it was going to work. It was not that it would contact the activation server once every 10 days, it would contact the activation server within a 10 day window. The actual day and time it connected would be random and was dependent on whether or not you actually run the game within that 10 days. Since you have no real way of knowing when that contact is supposed to take place, you would be essentially forced to always keep the machine online while running the game. For someone like me who runs a gaming machine that is physically separated from the network, that is a huge hassle, a hassle that Steam just does not have.
I actually prefer that Steam keeps my games up to date for me, at least the ones that I bother updating. I have a few older games through Steam that are never going to be updated again, those are the ones that I primarily run on an offline machine.
Actually, it sort of enhances the point, since those activation limits on those games are not actually set by Steam at all, but are a result of those games also having SecuROM on top of Steam.

Yup, here there's too much text for something that is really very simple to describe, imho :P
Why DRM is da shit? Because DRM is the attempt to regain control of content distribution in the information society, where this control is no more in the hands of publishers. By achieving this, the publishers try to mess as much as they can with users devices and customers traditional owning rights.
Sony got sued for this, because it's unfair. End of the story, and of all this DRM madness. If I was billionaire I would like to spend all my daylight hours by suing the hell out of any damn company using DRM, and especially DRM like SecuROM, Starforce.

Ok now that's just absolutely impossible, just trying to run Steam on a different Windows on the same machine is enough to trigger the need to reconnect for reactivation, so I don't know how you manage to move your Steam games from a computer to another without having it complaining about it.
To give you benefit of the doubt in case Valve change something recently I just tried with the latest update of Steam and no, it still doesn't work, Steam say the offline mode is unavailable and that you need to re-connect before being able to do anything, so again I don't see how possibly you could have done it unless of course you have a cracked version of Steam or the only Steam game you own are the very few DRM-free one like Commander Keen or the first X-com.
Because that how licensing rights works and have nearly always worked, they are not forever they are limited in time most of the time for a 5 or 10 years period if you are lucky, but often less.
So you are right it's assumption on my part, but assumption based on how it actually works with others media, so maybe it's "magically" different with Video games rights(maybe GoG team can enlight us on that part), or maybe Valve manage somehow to convince third party editors to grant them "eternal" rights but it's extremely unlikely, and strangely if that was the case why would talking about that be such a taboo subject on Steam forum.
Again no, before they finally decided to remove it, there was long explanation about how it was supposed to works in Mass Effect forum, the game would have tried regularly to re-authenticate online and if it was unable to for a period of ten day then it would have refused to start, so no you wouldn't have needed to remain always online, but to be online once every ten day period.
Once again this advantage is moot because all the games with activation limits also have activation limits on Steam and even some games who don't have any on the retail version like Witcher and Stalker CS do have install limit on Steam.
What matter is the end result not really on who to put the blame, if you buy Farcry 2 on Steam, Retail, or whatever you will have limited activation, I would say it's even worse on Steam as you have two layer of DRM instead of one.

I'm not opposed to publishers and (especially developers...they do the real work) getting money they have earned or trying to protect what they have worked so hard to create. I am opposed to them stripping away a consumer's rights in order to do so. I am also very opposed to invasive copy protections that do not hinder pirates, invade user's privacy by sending who knows what back to who knows where (Securom can do this--they say they only do it upon publishers request--but who actually knows what's sent when it contacts its server because its encrypted...check their website for a list of features if you don't believe me). There have been rumors (true or not?) that it can act like starforce and actually damage drives. Personally I've never had a problem with securom...but that doesn't mean others have and that doesn't mean that I trust it.
I also don't trust steam very much--its just another form of online activation. Who knows how long it will last, and if it goes offline in 3 years--where does that leave me to play my old games (besides gog.com of course :) )
I do like CD-Projekt & Stardock's form of protection, however. Stardock sells you the game (retail at least), and you're basically going to be legally able to play it for life because it doesn't require you to talk to Stardock's servers to play (same with The Witcher). Then if you want to get an update from Stardock, you have to download it from them after authenticating. So if you don't have the internet, you have a perfectly working game. If you do have the internet, you have an updated, regularly supported working game. CD projekt released tons of new (great) content for the Witcher for free to authenticated legitimate customers. That's treating your customers well, and you can be sure that the next interesting game that comes out from CD Projekt (or Stardock) will be purchased by me as long as they keep doing what they do.

DRM is one of the reasons I've switched, almost exclusively, to downloading games from directdownload sites. GOG is awesome of course; I also like direct2drive, which is where I get most of my games nowadays. Their DRM prevents you from installing the games you buy on more than one PC, however that's not a problem for me (only one PC), and your downloads are saved on their site forever for you to redownload if you need to.
Get this; I remember downloading an expansion for one of the battlefield games (either BF2 or 2142) from EA.com. When I was checking out, they offered to sell me, for ten bucks, the ability to redownload my purchase if need be (only once, if I remember correctly). That's the type of BS that drives some people to piracy; I personally believe that the vast majority of pirates will pirate regardless of things like that of course, but DRM just adds fuel to the fire for no reason other than to hassle legitamate purchasers of the games.

IF they will run their site forever... That's a big IF :)

True enough...but I can pretty much garuntee you that their site will last longer than any CD or DVD I have in my posession :) I'm notoriously clumsy with them.

A lot of this discussion has been about games, movies, music, but it extends even to hardware. Anybody know what HDCP stands for? Google it. One of the nasty side effects is where content you legally purchased refuses to play over your nifty new monitor because it displays a resolution higher than what the content was originally 'flagged' for. Bummer. You have to rebuy it.
I'm a beer or two past where sense would dictate not even typing right now, but a lovely quote, don't remember from where:
Treat customers like customers, make more money. Treat customers like pirates, make more pirates.
G'night all.

Actually we need only one sad situation to take place for HDCP to go away. Imagine a hospital. Imagine hospital's computers restrained by HDCP. Imagine someone doesn't get treated well because of HDCP and hospital's screens suddenly going blank. Now imagine a multi-milion law suit against all the companies that developed HDCP. There you go. HDCP is no longer an issue.

I have faith in the rule of law, but sometimes I feel that those situations don't come up often enough to get the laws changed fast enough.

I don't like it when iTunes songs work only in iPod, they should be standard mp3s that I can port anywhere. I mean, if I buy a hammer, it works with any reasonably normal nails...
Steam is too slow, I have noticed that. When I log in, it takes ages.

One of the most offensive things about certain types of DRMs, isn't that it controls what you can do with a game you've paid for (which is offensive enough in itself), but that it controls what you can do on your own computer with software that has nothing to do with that game or its publisher.

Publishers have absolutely no right to dictate what other, unrelated software a person can run on their own computer while playing a game. The automatic assumption that a person, who has legitimately paid for their game, must be up to no good simply because certain other legitimate software is running, reeks of how much respect publishers have for their paying customers, zilch.

Did you just resurrect a 4 years old thread about DRM to supplement current threads about DRM? To show us standpoint of people 4 years ago I suppose?