Come on, TSR, say something without dropping yourself in the s**t for once...
Here goes.
I can see the theory behind the lunacy, barely, and it is even more "facepalm-able" in the way they intend to execute it. This seems to be more of a publicity stunt to attempt to become some sort of Piracy fighting "front", or "celebrity" if you will. And as we should all be aware, so called celebrities often do very little to be heralded, so it seems to fit perfectly.
Onto the concept, the idea that you must maintain an internet connection is a double edged sword. While alot of people tend to have such connections nowadays (And i look to all the mmo'ers), there is still a vast amount of people who's only access to the internet and other online related things is probably their local library. There are still many villages/Hamlets in England that are not hooked up yet, and probably even more that are using the same infrastructure as when phone lines were initially installed, so merely getting a reliable connection is a challenge.
Reliability in England as far as i know, seems to be concentrated to the major cities, while the rest of the county all contend with eachother every evening waiting for 10 minutes for Facebook to load so they can see what people were doing yesterday. It is places like these that they are going to alienate, and from my limited consumer expertise, i can only assume that it is in said places that a major percentage of "offline" games are sold.
In short- A publicity stunt that has had the same thought applied to it as we did when we let you damm Americans take Hugh Laurie.