Hmmm...it's possibly worrying for the future, but seems to be no big deal right now.
In fact, thinking about it, this COULD actually just be a means of keeping trophies fair/robust, and have nothing to do with DRM at all! That's the actual effect of it at the moment...lets hope that's all the becomes of it.
I REALLY want a Vita more than ever, BUT the battery issue will be a deal killer. Since no one knows for sure if it works without a battery installed, I'll have to try it for myself, risking my first Vita.
I'm going to get my preorder in, open it, pull the battery, close it...and see if it still works.
Maybe I should buy a game with it first though too, in case for some reason it would boot to the menus but not a game... although if I bought Uncharted, then I'd need a memory card, and blah blah blah....
If it DOESN'T work, I'll try to be strong and just sell it and dump the format. If it DOES work, I think I'll go nuts and buy every Vita game I'm even vaugly interested in

D
I should probably dump my DS and 3DS, painful as that is.