[zee007]

This is what DRM says :-

"You could have easily downloaded our product/music/movie for free. But you went out of your way to pay us for it. Thank you. In return, we'll punish you by putting restrictions on you that you wouldn't have had if you didn't bother to pay for our content."

A logic that sadly only makes sense to out-of-touch executives: "Hey, since we can't get people stealing our stuff, lets punish people paying for it instead".

[npsimons]

The reality is a little more nuanced. Basically, there are software people (people like you and me) who convince the execs that they can increase sales by reducing copyright infringement; all it takes is a little DRM they claim. Whether this is due to malice or incompetence is unknown, but one thing is for sure: we should start shunning these people. I don't care how good the money was, DRM creators deserve to be publicly named and shamed, or in the case of incompetence (believing that DRM will work), educated.

Of course, this is a supply side solution to a demand driven issue; but so is DRM :) I'm not sure how to reduce the demand for DRM, because the sad truth is that with enough demand, there will always be some idiot/huckster willing to implement it.

[altcognito]

The reality is even more nuanced. Execs see people pirating their stuff and believe that those are truly lost sales. (and maybe some % of them are) They believe that if they can make it unpalatable/difficult enough to pirate music/movies etc... they will return to the halcyon when everything was good and they were making money hand over fist.

In truth, more people are turning away from traditional media than ever before as choices have expanded more and more. They deplore this as well, but in some cases the genie is out of the bottle (we are never going back to the days of 3-4 networks where power and profit margins were greatest), so the best they can hope to accomplish is to own all the networks and control the stores. They are winning.