Digital Rights Management (more properly and less ironically named Digital Restriction of Media) is a way for the big media companies to decide whether or not you get to use the data that you have. You are a thief until they decide otherwise.
Digital Rights Management manages digital rights like jail manages freedom.
DRM on Windows 7 does things like artificially crippling an otherwise normal, uncrippled cable television channel.
On the malware/spyware issue, what you are saying is that provided that you use additional software to protect your Windows system you could very well have trouble. And this makes Windows 7 no different than all of the other versions of Windows that came before.
I've been virus/trojan free for years on XP, Vista and win 7.
You know, I hear this a lot. I never hear someone say, "My machines are all eaten up with bots and malware!"
Yet somehow there are botnets that have 10,000,000+ compromised Windows systems in them.
The reality is that the new botnet malware is very discrete. You could easily be infected and not know it.
Uh, actually that's extremely unlikely in my case but I'm not going to argue. I just offered my personal experience. YMMV.