Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do people keep equating DRM with proprietary? Granted, it does allow for lock-in, but it depends on who's doing the lock-in. I don't think the case has been sufficiently made that DRM is bad in and of itself. I am all in favour of open standards, no vendor lock in, I'm in favour of open source and free software. Let me reiterate just so there's no confusion, I use Ubuntu on the desktop, I use Gentoo on the server…
> Why do people keep equating DRM with proprietary? DRM must be proprietary. The whole point of DRM is that only the authorized devices get the "special source". DRM is closed source, obfuscated binaries, tricks and traps to drop people reverse engineering them. If it was open source then the functionality could be duplicated or the special sauce modified for any use. There's no other conceivable way DRM can function…
If however the provider doesn't accept the fact that the permission to read is equal to the permission to copy something, then you're in trouble.
The formula could be so simple - distribute your content on high bandwidth, highly available networks, give access on a per-device or per-account basis (and charge money for that access), thus enable people to watch anything they want instantly and safely, and you gain back pretty much all of the customers you've lost to piracy, that would have bought your physical media before. Restricting copies is mostly useless since there are copies floating around of anything anyways. There's always been means to get content illegally, it's just now that the illegal way has become easier to use, or more importantly, the only way to get the content in a reasonable timeframe in the first place. Letting most of the world wait years between release in the US and the availability to stream and then wondering why they dare to download it anyways, is just not a sane way to go about and it has nothing to do with using DRM or not.