I agree, DRM is about controlling the media you have in your possession. Hoops to contend with before using it as you so chose. I download media from many sources every day. If I can use that media without further communication from the source . . . then I consider it to be DRM free. . . GOG is one of those sources . . . IMHO . . .=)

No matter how many times you say bam, you are never going to succeed in making DRM a useless term. You are the only one struggling with it. Plenty of the English you use every day could have the same type of argument you are presenting here applied to it, and it would be just as much a waste of time as this. The only thing you are doing is failing to communicate effectively.

Again, I aim to please.
And once you verify who you are with Impulse, there is NOTHING else required in order for you to fully use the files you grabbed. Again, we are arguing semantics which, gasp shock and amazement, is kind of my point.
Hell, when you verify who you are with certain flavors of Securom, there is NOTHING else required in order for you to fully use the files you grabbed.
Also, out of curiosity: What am I defending?
All I am trying to do is just to help open a few minds and possibly get a few laughs out of how people call some stuff DRM and other things not. It really is hilarious. If Ubi-DRM is called Monkey-Jam instead of DRM, does that make it any less annoying? If GoG's DRM-Free model is called DRM, does that make it any less great?
Does a rose by any other name smell-err, I refuse to finish that one. Me no likey Shakespeare.

Again, more of the same . . .
oh, DRM, that is what you defend, day in, day out. . . . nite . . .=)

Really? Wow, that is news to me. Where was I defending DRM in this thread?
All I have been doing is pointing out that it isn't black and white, and that the term is actually VERY broad. So rather than just say "It has the word DRM in it, it must be ebil!", say "Well, I for one really don't like this DRM model. It touched me in my bathing suit area"
You usually make comments like this, so I might as well go on a bit of a tangent to explain (yet again) what many of the more militantly anti-DRM people tend to view as a "defense":
I don't like most of the flavors of DRM. I find them annoying. That being said, I find that services like Steam tend to outweigh the annoyances with benefits, but your mileage may vary.
However, I also feel the need to point out that DRM DOES work, to some degree. It stops idiots from pirating things. It is just a matter of finding a balance between stopping idiots and annoying users, which most DRM-models have failed at.

Well, personally I would consider games like Sins of a Solar Empire to be DRM free. You do need to be online to download patches. But that's true of every game ever made.
The key facet of DRM is that it is intended to impose restrictions upon the user. That is its purpose. While GOG may have restrictions such as no resale rights, these aren't imposed through the site or the game files or anything even vaguely DRM related. They're simply not facilitated, which is something else entirely.
Which is what it boils down to: the distinction between imposed restrictions through technology and simply the lack of facilitation to do something. You can call a lack of facilitation a restriction, but that does not make it DRM.

Exactly. And having to log-in imposes a restriction upon us. A very minor one that most of us don't care about, but whatever.
And you hit the nail on the head "imposed restrictions". So unless anyone knows the scientific unit of measurement for how hampered we are by a given activity, it is going to have to vary from person to person. I for one feel very annoyed by disc swapping, so I tend to call that DRM. On the other hand, Ubi's PR people don't feel annoyed at all by not being able to play a game because a server is overloaded, so they don't consider that DRM.
On one end of the spectrum, you have the broad definition that includes GoG. On the other end, you get so specific that nothing is DRM. Everyone picks their own spot on that scale, depending upon how much they feel restricted by certain activities.

And we get to the immovable object, and why people don't want to admit it.
"DRM is bad"
And this is where I basically stop bothering. It is one thing to try to convince people based on the actual measures taken to manage who can access what. But I can't convince people when the argument inevitably boils down to intent. So-and-so can't be X because So-and-so isn't "bad".

I see Gundato is up to his usual antics. No point even touching any of that.
Personally, I do see GamersGate being deceptive in claiming some of their games are DRM free. The way I see it, DRM-free means that I can take the installation file(s), back them up to wherever I want, then install them at any point in the future on any hardware capable of running the program, as many times as I want, and that whoever sold me the game isn't trying to get in the way of me doing any of this. Of course, as the likes of the ISO hasn't rigidly defined DRM there are always plenty of apologists to try to claim that even though you can't do all the things I mentioned with X, X isn't actually DRM because of [insert mental acrobatics]. Talk until you choke on your tongues, I don't care. It's about honesty, and the spirit of one's actions matching the spirit of one's words. And when those two don't match I'm going to be that much more careful when doing business with any such person or company (or not doing business with them, as the case often is).

Yes, and I live in Canada, actually, sofwtare is treated as literature here for the purpose of copyright laws.

You really should read your posts.
You have been discounting the OP's opinion as invalid . . using personal opinions wrapped loosely in fact. Quoting absurd statements that were not made further reduces your credibility.
No, I don't make statements like this, you do. Your patronizing tangent to explain the obvious (yet again) insults the intelligence of anyone reading it. Every time someone rejects your pro-DRM stance . . . you are offended. Apparently, anyone who disagrees with your opinions are "militantly anti-DRM" and could not possible have a valid reasons for their point of view.
DRM works? So "idiots" are now capable of pirating and DRM is there to stop "idiots"?? Hold on . . yeah, just checked TPB, nearly every book, movie, game and CD is available . . . you got me there, one or two missing . . . it's working great. I feel the need to LOL . . . =)

Well said . .

You can. The downloader doesn't actually install the game. It just opens the installer once it's done downloading. So you can back up all the downloaded files in the install directory and install them as many times, on as many machines etc without restrictions.
You don't need the downloader past downloading the files. Although sometimes you need it to initiate the installation as the installation file isn't created until you do. In those cases it's best to back the files up when the installation executable is running.

Which has what to do with what I wrote? I'm not talking about the general perception nor am I adhering to it. If you have nothing else to add then simply say so.

Your nationality is stated to the left of what you post. Which is why I was asking what relevance US copyright law has to a Canadian talking to a Brit about buying from a Polish digital distribution service. :P Something which you haven't really clarified, to be honest. Is the right of resale enforced in Canada also then?

Yes, one has the right to resell literature (which is what software is under Canadian law). It's just so much easier to find American law on the internet, since there are more Americans than Canadians.
But the big thing is DRM is subjective, if you live somewhere where the ability to resell software is a right than gog, steam, and every piece of software that doesn't allow resale in one form or another has DRM. If you live somewhere that it isn't a right then it isn't DRM. Anything that restricts (manages) digital rights would have to be called DRM, however people don't usually refer to anything that existed before the term DRM was coined as DRM, as that was for the most part non-invasive and people other than pirates could pretty much completely ignore it, and pirates didn't have to pay too much attention.
The invasive DRM that we see nowadays does hurt legitimate users, but pirates still barely have to do anything to shrug it off. And gog does a very good thing by being completely free of invasive DRM, and completely free of DRM altogether if you don't live in a country where you are entitled to the ability to resell software so long as you have to give up all your copies. (If you didn't have to give up your copies to the same person you sold to then it wouldn't be DRM because you could copy and sell the copies)
It's good to know there is a company that understands that invasive DRM does exactly as much to prevent pirates as asking people nicely, and asking people nicely not to pirate it doesn't lose nearly as many customers as invasive DRM.
Frankly, when they started making copy-protected discs, that was DRM, as that prevents legal copies as well as illegal ones.

So how are e-books affected by that? Does the law even come into effect with digital distribution sites?
That doesn't follow. At all. DRM isn't about infringing on your legal rights. But rather enforcing the copyright holder's legal rights by restricting your usage in accordance with their wishes.
That's why I maintain that DRM has nothing to do with piracy or has ever attempted to have anything to do with piracy. Companies that use DRM know there are going to be people they can control and people they can't. Their focus is clearly on the ones they can control.
Very true on both counts.