I suspect that it isn’t tenable; but I have the unpleasant suspicion that easy DRM is a lousy equilibrium state because it allows the DRM-owners to have most of the best of both worlds: by virtue of having some DRM, they get every inch of legal control accorded to DRM systems (and that’s a lot), which allows them to crush anything remotely commercial or high profile that depends on circumvention (and, if history tells us anything, it’s that content industries don’t have a clue, even when talking about technologies that end up making them a zillion dollars, like the VCR, never mind technologies that might actually threaten their bottom line, so giving them control seems like a terrible plan); but they also capture a decent slice of the ‘grey zone’ revenue from customers hacking around, buying things that would otherwise be unacceptable because they can be modified, clandestinely, and so on.
Maybe I’m taking Chernyshevsky a little far; but I like to see DRM that hurts. That reminds both buyers and sellers what the real costs of their desire for control are. I enjoyed watching the various ‘Playsforsure/WMDRM’ vendors shut their authentication servers down, one by one. Watching the ongoing clusterfuck that is “Ultraviolet” is pleasing. Having Microsoft sent home crying when they proposed the Xbox One Bold New DRM system was excellent fun.
Weak DRM gives people an out, buyers and sellers both, in the same way that selective enforcement lets bad laws stay on the books. I want to see failure, frustration, customers shafted by broken DRM systems, vendors swamped with support calls and dragged through the mud by angry users.
