You have to wade a long way into this article on DRM before you find the real stupidity being backed by the advocates of DRM:

Don Huesman, senior director of faculty technology at Wharton, also contends that DRM has value. "Most people think DRM is a problem, but I don't agree. I'm a fan of approaches that reward creative talent," says Huesman, who at the same time acknowledges problems with many current content protection schemes, including Sony's "obnoxious" behavior. But DRM shouldn't simply be thrown out, he believes. The goal of DRM is to "keep honest people honest" about sharing content. If you can prevent most consumers from swapping files across the Internet, then the content creators can benefit, says Huesman, who argues that DRM doesn't have to be 100 percent effective to be a success.

"If it's 20 percent effective, that's enough. You have to err on the side of access and fair use," he suggests, adding that using DRM is better than allowing piracy to run rampant. Why settle for 20 percent? According to Huesman, before DRM technology, content owners couldn't even track what happened to their property once it was purchased. If DRM manages to be just successful enough not to be a burden, enough incremental dollars will go to the creative types to be worth the effort.

So... he notes that content has not been protected in the past as a way of stating that some mostly useless (but certainly annoying) DRM system that stops 20% of piracy will be a net positive. If that's the case, how did the industry ever make money with audio tapes being available? And don't razz me with crap about how the lower quality made it less of a problem - contrary to popular belief, most music listeners aren't tremendously huge audiophiles - i.e., they don't care. I made plenty of party mix tapes back in the 80's, and I ended up listening to them more often than I listened to the LPs I had purchased, for the simple reason that they had only songs that I liked.

All digital does for most people is make the process faster and easier. Fortunately, there is some sanity out there; in the same story, Mark Cuban states the obvious:

Cuban doesn't buy it. DRM is "a waste of time. There is always someone smarter" who can sidestep antipiracy efforts, he says.

This is exactly why Cincom Smalltalk NC doesn't have time-bombs or any other sort of protections - whatever we do, someone else will quickly find a way to hack around it. The sort of person who's willing to use my product illegally isn't going to pay me anyway - so adding "protections" will only limit my exposure. It's past time for the music industry to wise up to that obvious bit of wisdom - most people will happily pay for music - or TV, or movies - so long as they don't feel like they are getting stuffed into a locked trunk with the DRM.