read an article that starforce is slowly going to die as more game devs are moving away from it due to outcry from their fans.
i used to be a fan of starforce till i realised it sticks around after u uinstall the game and slows things down. the expensive SF (splinter cell 3 for eg) was a really good form of protection and SF had potential untill this.
i reckon the best protection would be to release the game full of bugs (almost unplayable) and release a patch at the same time which fixes everything but is only downloadable through a steam like system. however one cd key can only download once.