Khyber's Journal: DRM Has Struck Again, What Are My Options?

Well, DRM has blind-sided me once again. I own the shiny UT3 with Bonus Content Disc and art manual, and haven't had to ever re-input my CD Key (it's never needed to be reinstalled.) It's been misplaced SOMEWHERE (it's not on the inside of the case as the game itself says,) and I can't find it. Of course, I try to play today after not playing for a few weeks - I get "Your (insert INI here) is out of date, would you like to update now?" with option to backup originals, which I chose. I boot up the game, and I'm prompted for my CD Key. I quit, and tried restoring from backup. Restoring the backups didn't help at all. Epic Megagames has been pretty useless in helping me with this, as well.

This isn't my first time encountering digital restrictions, either. I purchased STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl over Direct-2-Drive right around the same time I purchased UT3. Those of us that bought STALKER through this service are absolutely locked out from multiplayer. The reason? The physical disc versions have a patch up to 1.0006, the Digital Distribution only goes up to 1.0005, with no plan to update. There are no 1.0005 servers, all of them run 1.0006. There are no known workarounds because apparently something about the Digital Distribution version is different from the version on physical discs, and the patch was so unstable as to be absolutely broken from the get-go. THQ's official support ended with version 1.0005, so they are of no help. The game creators, GSC, are a foreign company, leaving me almost no recourse of any sorts with them for an official working patch. I've opened a support ticket with Direct-2-Drive, and have yet gotten no reply to my request for either a refund or a physical disc copy of the game so I may properly patch up to everyone else's level and play online with them.

What are my options in this sort of situation? I'm pretty tired of being jerked around by my wallet and given the shaft at every purchase. I live in California, but I'm not too familiar with the Consumer Protection Laws (only had a year to really look at them, and that's only a passing glance, if that.) Besides boycott and other ineffective means of protest, what options do I truly have, given my situation?