Does excessive DRM actually encourage piracy?

So, Spore is on it's way to becoming the most pirated game ever. 

If you've missed the online shitstorm I'll summarise, the game only allows you to install it 3 times. Now, I'm not one of those gamers uninstall games once they have played them for a bit and then re-installs them at some later date when they fancy playing again. I'm too lazy for that, I'd just buy a bigger disk. If I was I expect that'd be annoying. Even so, I do have games like Civilisation 2 and Doom II that I've installed multiple times on multiple computers way more than 3. And I've had 3 installs of XP on my current computer, all of which have required all my games to be re-installed. 

Apparently you can phone those evil bastards at EA, tell them your tale of woe and they will give you more installs. 

On the other hand, all this has just been seen as a fun challenge to game crackers and pirates. People used to download cracked versions of games that they'd bought legitimately to get around "must have CD in drive" type protection because they were too lazy to keep swapping disks and it sounds like lots of people are downloading cracked versions of Spore, even though they own it, just to get around the DRM. 

On the opposite end of the scale was this piece from Positech Games talking about being inspired by pirates to make better cheaper games that people wanted to pay for.

So, I think DRM encourages pirates. What do you think?

ps. I'm hoping to get a (legitimate) free copy of Spore at some point soon so I'll endeavour to write one of our excellent LazyViews about it. You should really read the one Danny's had in draft for 2 months about Rock Band.