I never thought of the option of being able to download a game you own (and, gasp, had to go online to register) to any computer you want and play it anywhere before Steam was unveiled. It is a plus to me.
-if you own it, wtf do you have to download it for much less ask for permission to play every time you run it?
-play it anywhere? please, what..you gonna go to the library to study and suddenly decide to take a HL2 break...of course the library won't mind that you hog 3+ GB of their bandwith to play (not to mention how likely it would be that they would have sufficient hardware to play)...pshaw...such a triviality! same goes for work, or a friends house...or school how stupid is that? All these places more than likely have policies against such things. ever read the instructions for how to go into offline mode? they totally encourage you to do just that!
you trust a business that implicitly? to look out for your best interests? you deserve what you get. have fun in 1984-land!