DRM: Bane of existence? Or necessary evil?

I've heard a lot of complaints about DRM (digital rights management), and I wanted to address some of the complaints here. DRM tends to be a very touchy subject for people, much like airport check-in or homeland security (neither of which I understand the complaints about). So I wouldn't be surprised if this earns me a few nasty comments, but oh well. To each his own.

First, what is DRM? According to the Wiki article, it is access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, p...