I think Starforce is by now the most secure cd protection. It's as good as impossible to write "one click and go" tools to remove starfoce from an executable (like it is possible with safedisc or securom). One of the main problems are really the VM's. The can hold a huge amount of files which are used in realtime. A I had a nice example here, where Starforce had some level files in it's VM, making it impossible to play it (even if you had a perfect dump)

The dark side of the protection really is its compatibility. I've never seen a protection which behaves that different on nearly every computer. I really hope that they fix this issue with SF4 (which is already in development).

As time will go on, nearly every protection will implement VM's making it nearly impossible to put cracked copies out beofre the games hit the stores.

Greetings
Mav