Let me lay it out for you: there is no such thing as non-evil DRM. When I buy a game, I *OWN* the game, and I have the right to install it on as many computers as I want to (not necessarily at the same time, admittedly), without any need for activations, explanations or justifications; I have the right to give it to friends for free, resell it when I'm done, or also to let it sit in my basement for 20 years and then dig it out and play it again.

No you don't. It is not fair for someone to invest millions in intellectual property only to have them 'sold' to some schmuck for $50 with no strings attached.

Let's get something clear. This is intellectual property we are talking about, when you buy a DVD you're not buying the physical media (you can GET DVD's by the 25-pack at Best Buy if that's what you're after), you're buying the sum total of the work of a cast of thousands with the result being that particular arrangement of bits and bytes on the DVD itself. Unlike traditional property, you can make a 1:1 copy of those bits and bytes at almost no cost to yourself. Becuase of that, it's unfair to bind Intellectual Property to the same rules of traditional Property...in my opinion the Publisher is perfectly within their rights to not 'sell' you their intellectual property and instead license their IP to you for you to enjoy under certain conditions. This goes even for "free" software, because even their IP is licensed to you under the GPL, BSD, or some other license which has their own set of restrictions and things you can't do with their IP.

Now don't get me wrong, I think that some companies terms of use are stupid. In particular, I don't like installation limitations at all, I want to be able to nuke my hard drive and install my games anytime I like without worrying if I'm going over the limit (although usually activation services are pretty lenient and can add additional installs at your request). But some of your demands are asking too much of developers and publishers and are impossible to implement without rampant piracy occurring.

Wrong, if they detect that you've cheated then you are put out of good standing with VAC. Your games are intact, you just can't join VAC-secured servers in VAC-enabled games (All Goldsrc and Source games, plus Red Orchestra).

Sorry, but DRM will never go away as long as piracy still exists. Zero-day and Day-one warez cannibalize PC game sales, and as long as DRM prevents that, they're golden.

Steam is really no better, it's just that it hasn't had the same sort of character assassination that SecuROM and Starforce have gone through because they happen to have made HL2.