Some real world effects of DRM, for the average user who isn't trying to do anything particularly unusual.
I read ebooks on my PDA. So does my wife. We each bought books before we met. The PDA version of MS Reader can only be registered with one account at a time. So if I want to read a book my wife bought, I can only do so by either switching my PDA's registration (which, in turn means I can't read books that *I* bought), or by buying a second copy of the book. And, because we already have two accounts, we will have this problem with any books we buy in the future as well.
The second you seem to have dismissed out of hand. I buy a DVD, I don't *want* to be restricted to playing it on a home DVD player or PC. I travel. I have a 90 minute commute on public transit. I like to have video available in my PDA (and I doubt this is any easier with a video ipod, so don't tell me that's "mysterious"). Because of DRM, moving video from DVD to a file format the player can read is a multi-stage (meaning I need to come back and keep doing things the whole way through) multi-hour process. Home-made DVDs, without the DRM can do the trip in one step, it takes only 40 minutes to complete, using a single free program, and I was able to teach my computer-illiterate boss how to do it with only 2 demonstrations.
DRM doesn't impact most people simply because they already "know" they can't do certain things ("I can't play a DVD on this, it has no DVD drive"). If the DRM didn't exist, the "knowledge" wouldn't either, because it would be much clearer that these things are not just possible, but *easy* with most digital media.
Also, you list "ripping" among the mysterious. You do know that's exactly what you're doing when you buy a CD and put it on your computer for your ipod, right? And even that isn't as complication-free as you make it sound. Don't believe me? Look up Sony's attempt to install spyware, without the owners *knowledge*, let alone consent, on computers that ripped their CDs.
Yes but society as a whole would benefit if anyone could take that rock the moment you put it down and you could take it back the moment he puts it down. Most tools are owned by many households despite being in actual use only for a short period of time. Society would greatly benefit if we would just have a number of tools that belong to society (a sufficiently large number, of course) that everyone can use if he needs them and overall we'd get by with less tools. Same for food, some people starve while others have more than they need. Why not make food property of society and give it to those who need it? Oh, wait, that's communism and people don't seem to like it. The problem with communism isn't that people don't like it, it's that communism is an economic failure. Much as you may like to think society would benefit from it, in practice it doesn't work. It's been tried both on the large (Soviet Union) and small (the Israeli Kibutz) scales, and has exactly one guaranteed outcome: bankruptcy.
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Some real world effects of DRM, for the average user who isn't trying to do anything particularly unusual. I read ebooks on my PDA. So does my wife. We each bought books before we met. The PDA version of MS Reader can only be registered with one account at a time. So if I want to read a book my wife bought, I can only do so by either switching my PDA's registration (which, in turn means I can't read books that *I* bought), or by buying a second copy of the book. And, because we already have two accounts, we will have this problem with any books we buy in the future as well. The second you seem to have dismissed out of hand. I buy a DVD, I don't *want* to be restricted to playing it on a home DVD player or PC. I travel. I have a 90 minute commute on public transit. I like to have video available in my PDA (and I doubt this is any easier with a video ipod, so don't tell me that's "mysterious"). Because of DRM, moving video from DVD to a file format the player can read is a multi-stage (meaning I need to come back and keep doing things the whole way through) multi-hour process. Home-made DVDs, without the DRM can do the trip in one step, it takes only 40 minutes to complete, using a single free program, and I was able to teach my computer-illiterate boss how to do it with only 2 demonstrations. DRM doesn't impact most people simply because they already "know" they can't do certain things ("I can't play a DVD on this, it has no DVD drive"). If the DRM didn't exist, the "knowledge" wouldn't either, because it would be much clearer that these things are not just possible, but *easy* with most digital media. Also, you list "ripping" among the mysterious. You do know that's exactly what you're doing when you buy a CD and put it on your computer for your ipod, right? And even that isn't as complication-free as you make it sound. Don't believe me? Look up Sony's attempt to install spyware, without the owners *knowledge*, let alone consent, on computers that ripped their CDs.