I find this line of reasoning weak for one reason.
Things want to be as simple as they can be. DRM adds cost and complexity, it will _always_ be fighting an uphill battle. An electric drill is just an electric motor + chuck, MOSFET + pot, and a battery. Anything added on top of that has to justify itself.
Take a look at the printer industry, for example. You can buy the cartridge cartel inkjet printers, but most people already know that a laserjet is way more reliable -- because it's so simple.
I think we are in agreement just coming at the argument from different angles.
Yes "things want to be as simple as they can be"...so when something dumb like DRM is bolted onto it, you point allows us strip it out that much easier. I believe that one day the design of an item will put DRM first and function second such that the item itself will be secondary to the DRM. I don't know what form this will take but I feel that it is coming. That is why I discussed maintaining my old equipment as long as possible to stall this inevitable day as long as possible.
>Take a look at the printer industry, for example. You can buy the cartridge cartel inkjet printers, but most people already know that a laserjet is way more reliable -- because it's so simple.
I'd argue that you are conflating two different things: Reliability with freedom(lack of DRM).
Laser printers are more reliable not due to the DRM but due to the technology itself.
If you wanna look at it from another POV: Laser printers suffer from cartridge lockout chips that count number of pages printed, the yellow dots printed on sheets that allow the government to trace a printed document back to a specific printer and now the encroaching trend of adding spyware to the printer drivers. Does that make Laser printer technology any worse? Nope. But all that DRM is there regardless of how good laser tech is.
Things want to be as simple as they can be. DRM adds cost and complexity, it will _always_ be fighting an uphill battle. An electric drill is just an electric motor + chuck, MOSFET + pot, and a battery. Anything added on top of that has to justify itself.
Take a look at the printer industry, for example. You can buy the cartridge cartel inkjet printers, but most people already know that a laserjet is way more reliable -- because it's so simple.