Ian Hickson, who works at Google, put together an excellent post on Google+ that exposes the true purpose of Digital Rights Management (DRM):
DRM’s purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well.
Mike Masnick @ Techdirt further expounds on this with:
All of this shows a legacy copyright industry that is so focused on holding back innovation so that they have a veto right and control over the pace of innovation. That, of course, is bad for the economy, bad for the public and bad for society. Innovation is important in growing the economy, and due to silly laws around DRM, we are purposely holding it back.
Numerous examples of the negatives of DRM are provided, such as unskippable FBI warnings, previews & ads on DVD/BluRay Players that prevent you, the legitimate BUYER & OWNER of the product, from jumping right to the movie; not being able to transfer your Amazon ebooks to other non-Kindle devices such as the Nook; not being able to view a Netflex movie from two devices at the same time; etc., etc., etc.
For pretty much every example, tools exist to remove the DRM from the content — be it movies, video games, software or ebooks. In addition, non-DRM versions of most all this content are available on file sharing sites. Without DRM, you can do pretty much anything you desire to do with your content. All DRM does is PENALIZE THE LEGITIMATE PURCHASERS of digital content.
DRM is one of the PRIMARY reasons for the existence of piracy, and the content industry is solely responsible for this!
If you’re one of the many who belong to the “More Copyright is GOOD!” and “Piracy is Bad!” crowd, then I suggest you read Cory Doctorow’s recent book “Pirate Cinema” as it might change your mind, or at least get you to think about copyright laws in a new light. He’s provided free downloads of his book here. If you like the book, I suggest you purchase a copy, or better yet, donate a copy to a library or school.