Pretty much, at the time they were counting on the fact that the discs were so large compared with HDD capacity that nobody would bother dumping and distributing them. The ACSS that replaced it is a lot less convenient, but even that's been cracked.

I think the whole point is to look like you're doing something even if it's not effective and if it happens to work for a few weeks, then great.

The biggest problem with CSS though was that it didn't prevent copying the disc to another disc, just what players you could play those discs on. I assume they were more concerned with selling DVD players than people pirating the discs.