It's a shame, that they remove cd-checks that most of us are happy to live with, but leave the malware intact...

Yes, that still stinks.
But, removing those SF drivers can be a pain-in-the-butt from what I've gathered, too -- especially if you don't know what you're doing.
At least when you boot up a game that has removed the SF boot-check in a patch, you won't have to worry about any of those nasty issues that can arise from putting the SF-protected game disc in the drive -- i.e. the game not booting up at all; the game not booting so that it reboots your PC; your disc drive being slowed down forever; your disc drive getting ruined; your disc being ruined into shards; BSOD issues; etc etc.

Ahh, the good old days. Here is a funny for ya'll:
When StarForce was the big bad DRM out there, anyone who complained of any of the above StarForce associated problems was just 'a pirate complaining about not being able to copy a StarForce protected game'.
Now where have we heard that recently? ;)

There was a time when trying to run any StarForce game on Vista, good luck to you -- their games were driver-specific.
That was until SF actually released that SF driver update so people could run those games on Vista.

I imagine that’s because they don't know if anything else is using it. If they removed it and it broke another publisher’s product I sure you can imagine the crap that would get thrown their way.
As somebody else has already mentioned there is a utility somewhere that allows you to completely remove the malware but you need to be sure that nothing else is using it first, otherwise those products will either be broken or will helpfully reinstall it for you.

I was recently forced to crack COH: OF as no matter what I did the damn thing refused to recognise the DVD. Other people that were not as computer literate (and without Internet access on the PC in question for the activation option) would have been left with a coaster and £30 out of pocket.
I appreciate that COH: OF has 2 methods of DRM for both offline and online users, either activation or DVD check but I was livid when I can not use the activation method and the DVD check failed for no reason.

]Its a bit rich coming from EA of all people that we're either pirates or idiots if we object to DRM.
This is the company thats been bringing us identikit console ports for years. Crysis was a PC exclusive first and it still had a bloody console interface not mention the recent Mercnaries2. A PC game released in 2008 without Widescreen support !
This is exactly like banks right now. They should be putting a chokehold on wasted funds like outsourcing to DRM companies and useless Executives (cough)JR(cough) instead of padlocking a game i've already bought and then expecting me to continue funding this crap. Sins of a solar empire devs made a decision not to include DRM because they knew it would be hacked anyway and still sell well. And it did

The Stardock guys (the software house of Sins etc.) have been very clear on all this DRM crapness: they have published a Gamer's Bill of Rights that seems only common sense to me but that surely it won't be adopted by anyone in the videogame industry....

hey, wait a second, those guys are in my state, I would love to go up to their HQ and have a nice chat with their CEO, maybe he might listen to my logic (which involves explaining to him why drm scares people off from buying the game)