One false belief most customers seem to be under, is that DRM is for the sole purpose of stopping those nasty pirates from swiping their game. Many game companies use DRM like SecureROM to halt the resale and rental of games, which any (honest) game company will tell you is a MUCH larger hit on their profits, than the horrors of piracy that people like EA would have you believe. This is not to say that this justifies using DRM which treats your customers like criminals, but that a better DRM system is needed, to curb these markets. To date the best system I have found is one in use by Daemon Tools, which requires you to log onto their site to generate and download and encrypted key file. There are no install limits, and if you format you computer you simply go to the site a create a new key. This system not only DELAYS (you can't beat them, you know) pirates, but makes the resale of games worthless unless you are the actual owner, and is NON-INVASIVE.

Bioware us one of the few gaming companies trying to create alternative DRM such as code-hooks to delay pirates during the initial release. If they paired that with a Daemon-Tools like key system for their games, they could delay pirates, restrict game resales, and in the process not piss off their customers. Really all this system needs is a website which allows you to register (which all game companies have) and a small program to generate CD-Key based encrypted files which the game EXE will check. Honestly the biggest killer here, is that game companies are too willing to take the easy route and lease out their protection to Third parties, who make money selling to the studio themselves, and not the game purchasers. There is no shortage of good ideas out there for companies who are willing to listen and retool their DRM model, but more and more big corporations like EA are buying up smaller studios and slapping their 'one size fits all' DRM onto them.