[pcote]

Morally, I agree with you. DRM is an exercise in futility. But you aren't really comparing apples to apples here.

I radio ripped my share of music too when I was a kid. It was a pain. I had no little control and often no warning about when a song I wanted would play. The dj would often talk over the start or end of the song. A song I wanted would sometimes fade transition with a song I didn't want. Reception sometimes stunk. If everything went right, the overall quality of the recording was still inferior to what you'd get if the single or album were just bought outright.

In the 80s, DRM was naturally built into the inconveniences of the technologies of the time. Now that technology has solved for those inconveniences, we find ourselves in a fundamentally different situation for both consumers and business.

[yuhong]

The fun thing was that copyright law was probably never meant to be enforced against non-commercial copying. Of course, copyright laws are not the only example of laws that are poorly designed.

[TeMPOraL]

The truth is, you can't really design a law to withstand strong, powerful interest who simply want something not to happen. For RIAA, the society is kind of a piñata - you hit it with a stick, and candies fly out. A surprisingly popular business model, by the way.

At some point the piñata will break completely, though. Lots of candies, but then, game over.