Feel free to let me know if I am beating a dead horse; but it seems (e.g. matasano etc) like you have extensive expertise/knowledge here and I'm interested in your opinion.
My next questions are about DRM in the general context of content protection. Do you think it will ever be difficult to (find and) download an unprotected Top 40 single from the Internet? An HDTV rip of a television show? Will the "DRM ecosystem" be able to secure popular content in the future, thereby having a significantly detrimental effect on piracy? Is the security of BD+ the beginning of a trend in next-generation content protection, or an anomaly?
What I'm really trying to puzzle out is whether DRM prevents, or will prevent in the future, enough piracy (and convinces pirates to purchase? Very hard metric to quantify) to warrant the substantial inconvenience it places on legitimate customers.
iTunes DRM doesn't inconvenience the typical iTunes customer. DirecTV content protection doesn't inconvenience DTV subscribers. Blu-Ray BD+ doesn't inconvenience most Blu-Ray customers (almost none of whom "back up" their DVDs).
That's a big part of why they work.
The trouble I think most people have in analyzing DRM is that it's not an all-or-nothing problem; it's an economic one. There will always be cammed copies of first-run movies for sale on the street and circulating on BitTorrent. But as long as it's easier to buy than to copy --- at least in the first 2 weeks of a release --- DRM is working. To achieve that, DRM vendors just need to make the cost of a break more expensive than those first couple weeks are worth in piracy costs.
I don't really have a horse in this race. I'm not sold on DRM either. I've worked professionally on both sides of this problem. What I think right now is that CS types are underestimating the next generation of DRM systems. Software and content protection is getting more sophisticated. It also dovetails more effectively with systems security than it did 10 years ago. We want locks on our platforms so they don't get enrolled in botnets; those same locks will help content providers enforce contracts.
My next questions are about DRM in the general context of content protection. Do you think it will ever be difficult to (find and) download an unprotected Top 40 single from the Internet? An HDTV rip of a television show? Will the "DRM ecosystem" be able to secure popular content in the future, thereby having a significantly detrimental effect on piracy? Is the security of BD+ the beginning of a trend in next-generation content protection, or an anomaly?
What I'm really trying to puzzle out is whether DRM prevents, or will prevent in the future, enough piracy (and convinces pirates to purchase? Very hard metric to quantify) to warrant the substantial inconvenience it places on legitimate customers.