Culture is not created in silos. Culture is created by free exchange (which is not to be confused with "no things should be paid for"). DRM is just a speedbump on the road.
Content is not just culture, it is also entertainment. Indeed, the kind of content that is protected by DRM is mostly entertainment, and not very much culture. There is no reason entertainment should be free nor is there really a positive social value in making it free. What is the positive externality to society from some kid being able to listen to the latest Nickelback album or play the latest Gears of War game for free? Because handwaving about "culture" aside, that's what we're really talking about here.
The discussion about culture in the context of DRM is far from "handwaving." Culture and entertainment have always been intertwined; don't let high culture snobs tell you otherwise.
Yes, Gears of War is "central to our lives and to society's development."
The vast majority of the content protected by DRM is morally indistinguishable from acts at a strip club--pure, base, entertainment. And I don't see many people calling for those to be free, even though it costs a strip club owner nothing to let extra people look in through the window (i.e. zero marginal cost of reproduction).
Have you noticed how... "mainstream" porn stars have become in the last decade (at least, in U.S. society/media)?
Whether or not one agrees with a particular element, I think such influences are significant.
And, to extent this point a bit further and perhaps offer a contrasting viewpoint, for all the "objectification" of women that this prevalence may be promoting -- and I'm not saying there aren't some fairly pernicious influences, in this regard -- it also seems to be shaking off some of the cultural taboos about speaking openly about sex.
The outcome of such influences is not simple.
And being able to dialog about them is essential to understanding them. Which includes access that is not overly, artificially constrained. And which includes citation and reuse within the arts, for example. As well, in reporting, peer-to-peer (e.g. sharing game play videos), etc.
Once such influences have been released into culture, I don't agree with a private party having an exclusive hand on the spigot to just turn off access to and so informed conversation about such influences.
Reasonable compensation is one matter. Control of cultural dialog is another.
>Culture is not created in silos. Culture is created by free exchange
That was old style culture (mostly alive until pre 90s). Today's culture IS created in silos, by large corporations.
Today even the "grassroots", "viral" and "crowdsourced" upstarts embrace most of the ideas and styles of the silo world.
(One can substitute relative and in flux percentages --whereas I speak in absolutes for rhetorical effect--, but my main point I believe remains: today, more than ever, lots of "culture" is created in silos by large corporations).