Earlier quoted context omitted.
DRM was coming to browsers with or without the W3C’s blessing. In fact, it was already there via plugins and wasn’t going away. This has changed nothing except where the implementation is documented. The hysteria over this is just ridiculous.
DRM doesn't and will never work. It only serves to annoy people that pay for the movie/game/whatever legitimately. It's against everything the W3C stands for. You dont' have to support something just because it's happening. You fight it, you don't give into it.
- Makes archiving unnecessarily difficult/impossible.
- Micromanages legitimate use, including limiting legal usages.
- Reduces or eliminates goodwill towards platforms, content distributors and content producers, e.g., it ain't cool.
- Reduces sales through introducing artificial barriers to social network effects, i.e., torrenting often increases sales and popularity through lower-barrier social network effects.
DRM-free fails if people don't pay for it, but this is rarely the case as the majority of people seek to be honest and support their favorite content producers to keep creating more.
However, if like the RIAA and MPAA going after every single dime like corporate justice warriors, people can and will crack the DRM and share content or simply look elsewhere.