I was meaning to ask this for a long time but never got around to it.  Does the PS3 require the game disc even after the install?  If it is cached it will so I guess my specific question is: Does the PS3 copy all the game data off the game and render the bought disc useless unless one needs to reinstall?  Thanks!

You still need the disc to play.

 Similar to a PC. PC stores like 4GB per game onto the system but you still need to play the game from the disc.

Thanks.

Not to sound like a jerk, but obviously if you were able to play the game without the disk, piracy would bury the PS3.

Before the latest update, Warhawk would allow you to launch a game with the disk, take out said disk and launch it on another system. When I started the Warhawk, I was working under the assumption that the rule still held true. So the plan was to host the games on my 60GB machine and play on my 40GB and be able to come and go as I please and leave the server running all evening.

When I tried to do it on the league's first day, I was saddened and confused to suddenly have the game shut itself down when I asked for it to spit out the disk.

So to answer your question, it used to be possible with Warhawk. EDIT: An important fact to note is that the Warhawk game (Downloaded off the PSN or Disk version) is less then 900MB. So even with the disk, the entire game is installed on the HDD.