People have been trained to say that because that is how people decided to accept it when other DRM models were horrifically invasive (and didn't look dissimilar on paper...)

Steam IS digital rights management. You authenticate with Valve, they confirm your account has access to the digitam media (the game), and provide a download if you do. After that, you can do whatever you want with it. That is almost exactly the Stardock "goo" model.

Steam ALSO has an extra layer of drm on top that developers can optionally use that will prevent you from launching the game outside of steam.