Tahts fine by me having minimal drm after trying to install sacred 2 expansion blood and ice and having problems running the game thanks to the drm i say the less the better.

I'm getting it on the 360 anyway. Good on EA though.

This latest scheme sees EA victorious on all fronts despite still being as greedy as ever; the low-level protection on the retail release wins praise from the anti-DRM crowd while the DRM-protected bundled DLC scuppers the second-hand market and encourages the purchase of additional DRM-protected DLC to help them to milk ongoing profits throughout the lifespan of a game. It's brilliant.

Schweet. I'll def be buying the physical version then.
I totally agree with Ralackk about the online activation system - in 10 year's time, even if some companies have patched activation DRM out of their old games there's still probably going to be some games that are unpatched and unplayable. Will be interesting to see if EA does anymore patching out of DRM in the next 5 years. They say they have an explicit policy to do this, but so far it seems to just be Battlefield 2 games (BF2, and upcoming BF 2142).
I'm happy to buy SOME games though that require activation, as long as in the here and now I have acceptable control over my games. I'm happy with EA's activation scheme, but not happy with Bioshock or Grand Theft Auto IV's or any others that require activation as well as disk checking. In the future I won't be buying games with more than one DRM, so if Bioshock 2 has the same DRM as the first game then I won't be buying it.
And building a collection of Steam games is suicidal too in my opinion, which is why I'm restricting my Steam collection to Valve games. I will not be suckered into buying all my games from there, however cheap, because if Steam ever goes down then more than just Valve games would be affected.

There is absolutely no guarantee of either happening and EA being what it is makes it least likely publisher to ever join GOG bandwagon.
That is irrelevant and mostly out of the hands of developers/publishers unlike online authentication. Also most of us probably don't own now nor will own cutting edge computers in 10 years time (my HW lifespan is roughly 3-5 years barring core meltdown). Many of us buy games 6 months to few yeats after release to make sure game is patched properly and/or to get them cheaper. Some also wait Goty, Complete etc. editions to get the complete game. And there are some of us who are willing to wait the slim change game will eventually end up at GOG no matter how many years it takes.
fixed

Actually, DRM solutions tend to be imposed by the publisher, not the developer. So that too is out of their hands until their publishers says otherwise. So if the state of hardware owned in ten years time is irrelevant due to being out of the developer's control, then the state of DRM is also irrelevant for the same reasons -- plus the added fact that the state of the internet is out of their control too (and authenticating DRM relies on the internet, so that's an important factor to keep in mind).

RedundantDRMThreads.add();

Ok, should have writen developers/publishers there in the first place. And they are at fault if state of internet/authentication servers causes game not to function, they put the authentication there in the first place and are responsible for any damage or lose of game time it causes.All games with single player component and multiplayer games with lan gameplay must be able to run without internet connection being present. period. All patches for such games also must be available standalone. This should actually be writen as international law or basic human right.

I agree it should be part of consumer law, but basic human right? Um, it's only a game. I help a charity that does work in Tanzania, Ghana etc and having permanent access to games is the last thing on people's minds.

So, say for example, there's a fire at the data center where the authentication servers are housed, is the publisher really responsible for people not being able to authenticate their game during the period of time required to relocate the authentication server? It's not their fault there was a fire. And if that data center also just happens to house the servers related to all of their internet presence, how do you expect them to provide a patch which would temporarily remove the need to authenticate?
How about the advent of Word War 3 resulting in the total loss of the Internet to the general public? Are you then going to hold the publisher responsible?
Yes, these examples are a little severe (the first, however, has happened -- this year in fact) and while I hope the second and similar do not occur, you can't realistically hold any company responsible for loss of gaming time due to circumstances beyond their control. I'll think you'll find there are laws in place in most countries to ensure as such.
Your access to a game, is not a basic human right, nor should it reasonably be considered one. Games, like any form of paid entertainment, are a luxury and not a necessity. It probably should be a consumer right though, yes, but within reasonable reason, such as ensuring access for a specific period of time of say 10 to 20 years barring any circumstances which could be considered a force majeure.

In regard tot he DRM I think EA and Bioware learned a hard lesson through the backlash from the original ME and Spore.
They have since backed off on the DRM in large part (not totally mind you), but have still created an environment where the user will have to connect online to receive the DLC.
Makes me wonder if you can receive the DLC if you do not install the game first. If not, the downloading the DLC acts like an online authentication method only user initiated if they want the complete content tot he game.

Well, yes. Obviously.
Not that I dislike online activations, of course. They're far better than CD-checks.
But if something like this happens, and I can't play my games because of it, then the party responsible for that is the publisher. They were the ones who implemented the solution in the first place, knowing full well that their activation servers would not stay up forever, and that there would also be plenty of situations where the servers would go down temporarily.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundancy_%28engineering%29

You're missing the point I'm trying make. IF developer/publisher puts completely unnecesary online authentication or similar method in a game they are responssible to make sure user is able to play the game (at least single player/lan portion of it) at all times (including loss of net connection, server blowing up and 3rd WW starting all of the sudden) no matter what and when they eventually do not want to maintain the authentication server, they are to provide means for gamers who bought the game to still continue play the game afterwards for free. If they do not want these respossibilities and liabilities they should not put such restrictions in the game in first place.

As I've already stated this happened this year. The company it happened to had redundancy but even so, it still took them the better part of 20 hours to get that up and running to replace the primary systems. You simply cannot expect to have 24/7, 100% guaranteed access to authentication servers. It's simply not going to be possible.
Actually, I think you're missing my point. That being that you cannot realistically expect to have access to something until the end of time. It just isn't going to happen. Take your TV for example, do you expect to be able to use that forever? There's going to come a time when the parts within stop working due to their age. There's also going to be a time when the manufacturer of said TV can no longer provide replacement parts. There's going to be a time when all the people who have the skill to replace those parts are dead. The lifetime of that TV is finite.
Likewise, the lifetime access to a game is going to be finite whether you like it or not. For any number of reasons either those in the control of the people who can do something about it, or those that they have no control over.
So you can campaign to have DRM removed altogether all you want, but don't be under impression that the lack of DRM is immediately going to grant you indefinite access to your game. It ultimately won't.