Steam's legal footing looks pretty good to me. IANAL, but neither are you, and at least I was aware of recent case law movement on this issue. Why you weren't is puzzling, considering that it's been covered pretty extensively and recently here.
The reason is because of banal, annoying comments like this that reek of self-righteousness that caused me to walk away from Slashdot for awhile. So, in short... stuff off.
BTW: Steam still has MAJOR faults that nobody really mentions on gaming sites very often such as server lists not populating and authentication problems as well as that little banned issue they ran into a while back with Modern Warfare, so all of these services are really a pain in the ass when it comes down to it.
No joke. Add the random disconnects, the painfully slow server response times, inability to better choose your server, PITA local server setup, etc. Steam isn't perfect, but at least it isn't the permanent connection DRM that Ubisoft is using on Assassin's Creed 2
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
