Little bit of column A, little bit of column B. ;)
But to be serious, while I do a fair amount of reading about issues and laws surrounding copyright and DRM, I am not a lawyer and while I've presented things as I understand them my armchair analysis should naturally be taken with a large grain of salt.
It's also a bit of a sad statement that the rational response to some of the laws out there is "You're bullshitting me, right?"

There are alot of things I dislike about Steam. There are alot of things wrong with it. But anyone who has used Starforce for any period of time would tell you Steam is paradise compared to it.
It's pretty obvious that anyone who says Steam is worse has never used Starforce.

That's a little heavy handed, and certainly not looking at it from the other point of view.
I'd take a game with Starforce over Steam any day. At least with Starforce + cracked exe a customer can preserve their investment, even if the company/publisher goes out of business.
Although if we're looking at a comparison of actually having to leave each installed on the system to play the game, then well, Steam probably looks like a better deal in terms of system health. In regards to having the game down the road, a retail disc or a DRM free title is the best route to take.

The big difference with that scenario is the end responsibility for data storage. If the disc lover doesn't back up his media, doesn't store his cracks properly and he loses them, its stiff shit for him. With steam, there doesn't seem to be ANY option to do a real backup (I know you can back up most of the game files but from what I read on it, they're unusable without steam iteslf and are only there to prevent having to download them again). Also, assuming the disc lover installs his games once and cracks them and doesn't need to reinstall for months or years afterwards, his original discs should survive most anything if they're well stored
Also torrents exist for almost everything, even if a legitimate owner had to download a pirate version to get the crack, the chances are good that they could still get it.
As for steam outlasting the disc, the universe in infinitely variable and steam could go tits up at any time, all it needs is the right economic conditions & the wrong choice

Again, these what if scenraios are fanboyish and heresay.
What if tommorow a meteor took out Steam headquarters?
What if tommorow a big ass hole in the ground opened and you fell into hell?
Really, if your gonna make arguments, make them realistic.

I probably own more Starforced games than most (I'm talking dozens of original Starforce-games here), and it's never caused any sort of problems at all on my system. Starforce has, with the exception of me having to restart my computer a few times and type in some serials, been completely and utterly invisible to me as a user. And new versions do not have the drivers that everyone are so afraid of anyway.
And I own a fair number of Steam-games as well. Fact is that Starforce doesn't force me to run a big third party application or sign in to some central account (that can be taken away from me with the snap of some Valve-person's fingers) to run my games. Steam does, and that alone makes more invasive than any other common DRM-system.
The fact that you accuse me of being a pirate just nails it. I haven't pirated a game since Doom 3, and even then it was something I really didn't want to do. And stop talking about fanboyism, nobody in their right mind would be fanboys of a DRM-system, Steam or otherwise. That's just silly.

The methods of steam vanishing is irrelevant, it could be bankruptcy due to global economic crisis, a corporate takeover by someone who kills it or an attack by cybernetic monkeywizards from the planet zog.
The point of it is that it requires a non-user controlled external service (that has no real loyalty to you) to access things that have been paid for. Leaving the full control of your licences in someone else's hands is too much of a risk for many people.
I don't think that steam is going away so its not that relevant in the grand scheme of things but there's still the fact that you're not in control of your own software and thats the sticking point for many people.

Riiiiiight. Again I stand by what I say. Your trying to tell me a 3rd party app is worse then a rootkit.
The fact that a rootkit can give away all personal data to any hacker who logs onto your pc is one reason why.
LOL. So you guys would rather take your chances with a rootkit then use a 3rd partry app because of paranoia? Seriously. I hope you don't expect to be taken seriously in any location except one full of paranoid people, because your telling me this crap.

1. Steam is much more than a 3rd party app and 2. I'm telling you it's more invasive. You'd have to be an idiot not to see that. But whatever. I'm not going to waste any more of my time on this fruitless "discussion".

I've examined the contents of Starforce. Starforce changes root access of your OS. Starforce changes your cd and dvd drive speeds. Starforce phones home. How is this LESS invasive then Steam?
You talk to me about logging on, but how is your computer being destroyed and your vital info being taken less invasive?
I can honestly see now that your refering to your own experience with Starforce. But many people have good experience with Steam too. Your experience doesn't matter, because bad things that can happen from Starforce are far worse then anything that could happen on Steam... And that includes your account shutting down.

You know, the insults really aren't necessary; they add nothing to the conversation.
Regarding having to work at all angles, I keep a copy of said cracked exe on backup media and on my system. Considering I backup my system regularly, I think I'm ok. I wasn't speaking for everyone, I was speaking for myself.
With Steam you're relying completely on them as there isn't a reliable way to make a backup yourself. With a disc + crack, I can back that up easily.

In many ways I agree, at its worst starforce can be an install or even hardware destroying monster but most games I've seen don't use the full suite of rapetools, from my experience the only things I've seen used have been the cd check and online activation components. Sadly there's no way of knowing unless the developers actually TELL you what components they're using and its a rare one thats does (Telltale are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head but there's probably others) so its probably wiser to assume the worst on launch day and wait a month until people start bitching about the problems.

Well I don't know about starforge (have personal experience it forcing me to disable my virtual drives to play SF protected game) but securom can be anything from CD check to limited activations and internet validation so depending from publisher choise it can be less invasive than steam. Unfortunately some publisher are now forcefeeding us WindowsLIVE with its shitty extra content I'd never use or wanted but can play game without so again it can come as invasive as STEAM even if DRM is at it's lowest setting.
When do publishers realise I don't want my single player games connect interent unless I play internet multiplayer and all 3rd party aps and extra content should be optional and not forcefed to me like they are now.