A very good point. The anti-DRM crowd is taking the moral high ground here, but they should be rioting en masse every time this happens, not suddenly when the game they want has it. There certainly is an issue here, but the majority of complaints come across merely as flimsy excuses to steal a game they know they should be buying.

Well, I guess now that you've gone and won Spore, Lukage, you can

Look, regardless of how onerous or not-onerous the DRM may arguably be, it's still objectively a piece of software designed explicitly to remove usability. What DRM is supposed to do (prevent the game being pirated), it explicitly fails at. The pirates never encounter the DRM. Surely they realize this. The whole thing is an embarassing shell game designed to reassure shareholders that "something is being done" by hassling legitimate users with crap that the thieves never have to deal with.

You can argue all you like that the DRM isn't as bad as all that, gee whiz but from a practical standpoint it has no reason to be there at all. It's just EA leaving shit on our porches. And while a flaming shitsack doesn't really hurt anybody, you'll find that most people don't much care for it and will move to a neighborhood without so much shit in it if they have the option.

Worse, the only reaction from EA will be to bundle their next big-name title with Secret Double Encrypted Ultra DRM, which will TOTALLY stop piracy this time, for sure! Gosh!

(For the sake of the argument I'll just note that I have no intention of buying OR pirating Spore, since all reliable reports seem to indicate that I got 95% of the game when I bought the Creature Creator)

No problems here.
But then again I don't go dumbshit over DRM. I bought the game, if the DRM fucks around I'll just call EA and bitch.
I haven't noticed any installed "spyware" from SecuROM either. Torrents seem to work too (although I mainly just download Nartuo eps., lolz)

I figure if you're not a full-on dick licking fucktard pirate with terabytes of illegal content you've got nothing to worry about anyway.

Are you seriously trotting out the "if you're not a criminal you have nothing to worry about" argument?

Seriously?

Here, look, I'm slapping you.

If only you weren't so slappable. Then you wouldn't have to worry about my policy of constant slaps.