Dude, why would you not offer your own view? Be a man and make everyone hate you for expressing yourself. Like me.
All the people who are wanting to get rid of DRM are only looking at the issue from their own perspective. Which is fine, if you just want to be another whiny internet voice that will be mostly ignored by the people that matter. But if you're serious about debating the need for DRM, you have to admit it's a lot more complicated and nuanced than just crying "Death to DRM!"
You're all like the rebellious teenagers who cry about how unfair their mean parents are by imposing all these rules upon them. While all the smart people sneak behind their parents' backs to do whatever naughty things they please. Alternatively, you can just go along with their little ruse until they stop caring then you can do whatever you want anyway.

Just because you have never read anything about it does not make it less than real. Nucleonic diffusion, for example? heard of it? Course not BUT it does exist.
You incorrectly assume that DRM is supposed to decrease unpaid downloads and increase legal purchases, (in your quote), DRM is, in fact, a copy protection measure and has nothing immediate to do with downloading but is aimed at the copying aspect.
Depending which website you look at will also lead you up or down the garden path when it comes to DRM issues. Some even look at DRM as the illegal way of keepig paying customers out and alowing pirating to go on. Obviously that is a ridiculous concept but if you stray towards the middle the battlegrounds get blurry.
DRM worked for several years under Apple and has continued to work for many, many years with military, health service and government agencies, so tjhe question really is, what exactly is the problem?
Poor research and execution of DRM when it comes to PC games; that's the problem part. Fuelled by spurious claims that range from it deleting everything of a hard drive to it eating CD's and damaging the mother-in-laws lawn the issue gets all personal and irrational thereafter.

You do know that by now you wholeheartedly agree with me.
You agree to the fact that a DRM'd product does nothing to increase revenues.
So you're left with a product with something extra on it, which cost extra money and does nothing to increase the sales of said product.
In conclusion an extremely bad business decision.

It's like buying a special edition copy of Dawn of War 2 & getting a solid gold badge that says "Hi! I have Syphilis!". Expensive and stupid because virtually noone would want to wear it

I've not read the entire thread thoroughly (sue me :)) so I don't know if it's been mentioned, but there is one aspect where DRM has the *potential* to work, and that's 0-day piracy. Ok granted, in recent history most SecuROM released games have been cracked before the game is even available but that doesn't mean they won't manage to release a version that the hackers have a problem with. I remember a while back a version of Splinter Cell came out on PC that took hackers a few months to get past.
So from a business perspective, you can see that they might hope they'd eliminate immediate piracy, for at least a few days. This may well increase sales due to impatient people wanting to get their hands on the latest product - lets face it, most people that download something a few days prior to release (that would have bought it had it not been available) aren't gunna ditch the download and buy the retail product when it's available, that's definitively a lost sale. The question is, if they release a DRM'ed game that prevents the pirate versions for a day or two, will the sales make up for the pissed off customers who want nothing to do with it? I'd say it probably does, and then some.
Obviously, the issue is that as far as I'm aware, there's been sod all games released recently that haven't been cracked pronto. The hackers are too good or the software is too shit. My point ultimately is, these people aren't all morons - they clearly have an objective that they're going for. Naturally they don't give a flying monkey bollock about the customers experience, as long as they pay up and aren't frustrated enough to not buy that companies products again. I think that counts for most gamers given the amount of people who aren't aware of the shit side-effects of DRM, or who just don't care.
All that said, it's a bit depressing - I won't be buying any DRM'ed game and it's annoying that it's rare to find one nowadays that doesn't have DRM shite on it but the publishers have to do what makes most fiscal sense. At the moment they're clinging to the idea that that means copy protection - that may change the more they realise that these things really aren't working even for 0-day piracy. Here's hoping.
And yeah, kudos to Ubisoft for releasing the new PoP sans DRM - I bought that for that reason alone.

I tried to find out and there *may* be one, but because the firmware hasnt been cracked its effectively useless for playing games. And since the PS3 is region free, Sony should have a better time of going after mod chip makers/sellers than they did with previous consoles since there is no real legal use for the chip anymore.

Right now a Blu-ray writer will cost about half the price of the PS3 itself, and the discs aren't cheap either. It will be a while before it becomes affordable enough to be a real threat.

other than homebrew software which can be pretty swanky

I said that already.

This was why DRM was initially instituted, but as the technology surrounding piracy, as well as the overall market, has shifted over the years so have the reasons for the use of DRM. Something essential to recognize about DRM is that it only limits what people can do with legitimate copies of software. I'll repeat that because it needs to be emphasized: DRM only limits what can be done with legitimate copies of software. A pirated copy that has had the DRM bypassed is naturally under none of the constraints imposed by the removed DRM. Another essential thing to recognize is that DRM as a security model is fundamentally vulnerable. At its heart DRM is cryptography but where potential attackers are handed the encrypted data, the cipher, the key, and the plaintext. These last two are buried under layers of obfuscation, but obfuscation is absolutely worthless as a security measure against any determined attacker. The end result of all this is that any DRM scheme can be broken if someone wants to break it.
Now, the fact that all DRM can be broken was not so much an issue back in the day when we were seeing dongles and bad sectors on floppies. This was because piracy at this time was mostly limited to people with legitimate media looking to install it on multiple computers (friends' computers, relatives' computers, all the computers at their company, etc). You didn't have to stop everyone from breaking the DRM, you just had to make it difficult enough that it simply wasn't worth the hassle for most people. Broadband becoming ubiquitous and the development of decentralized distribution protocols (e.g. bit torrent) changed all this. Now all that's needed is for a single person to break the DRM and put up a torrent, and suddenly any drooling moron can get a copy with the DRM already broken. In short, the fact that DRM is fundamentally broken as a security model now means that it is absolutely ineffective at preventing any meaningful amount of piracy.
So why do we still have DRM if it is ineffective? I believe that part of it is that many in decision making positions still haven't been clued into this fact, and combined with control complexes and the inclusion of DRM almost being something of an industry standard it remains around simply as a relic that no longer serves a purpose. But as I said, I believe this is only part of it. Recall the first essential thing to remember about DRM: it only limits what can be done with legitimate copies of software. What follows from this is that we're seeing DRM not being included to stop pirates, but to limit what people who purchased the software can do with it. The ability to resell the software is a big thing some companies are targeting, with the ability to backup media also being targeted to a lesser extent. DRM now serves as a way to strip away rights with technology that people would otherwise have under the law.
If you're still reading at this point, thank you, and allow me to summarize: piracy can no longer be stated as a rational reason for the continued existence of DRM.
The call to get rid of DRM makes sense from both the perspective of customers as well as the perspective of software developers and retailers (something that's been recognized by GOG, numerous smaller developers, and to a lesser extent Stardock). From a customer's perspective the reasons for ditching DRM should be obvious. From a developer/retailer perspective the reasons to get rid of it are that 1) it doesn't prevent any meaningful amount of piracy 2) it costs money to implement and 3) it has the potential to decrease sales and drive away customers. If you still want to go into what you consider to be the complicated and nuanced aspects of DRM then I'd be more than happy to discuss the matter in detail, although I'll give you fair warning that DRM is one of my favorite subjects to debate and rant about.

Atari is busy developing a new sort of DRM that not only prevents legitimate customers from playing the game but it is so effective that it's preventing the game from being RELEASED in the first place. The game is done and ready to be shipped but DRM is preventing piracy from not letting people have the game. Google "Mysteries of Westgate" for more.

Oh, fucking awesome. Well, looks like I have a story now. So here we go:
Just tried playing World In Conflict, which I bought from Gamersgate a few months ago. It asked me to activate it, presumably because I installed a new network card yesterday. I grudgingly went to get my serial code, only to find that since Gamersgate's gone 'client-free,' their installer software - where the serial code can be found - no longer works. And the website proper doesn't include the serial code anywhere.
Fuck you, Securom. And Gamersgate, get your shit together. This is pathetic.

Doesn't it tell you that on your 'My Games' Page?

It's supposed to. It doesn't.
I notice there's no download link either, so if I didn't already have it installed I'd be doubly out of luck.

I guess all you can do is complain and wait for them to fix it then.
Atleast you can pass the time by reading the manual :p