Okay, time to throw some new spin in here... I'm a publisher (my wife is the author), I'm also an Open-source developer (lots of packages) and give away a lot of stuff 'free' to the net and deal a lot with copyright/copy-protection/DRM etc etc.
Now, my view on this whole debacle is simple - as the OP says, the horse has left the barn and there is no DRM scheme that will truly protect a given electronic media (looks like BluRay just lost the fight now that the master keys are leaked). There's no DRM on any of our free or commercial productions, we just don't see the point given that we are the content producers
and publishers. Copies will get out there irrespective, those who would pay will pay, those who wouldn't usually won't but it doesn't matter- we actually win out because they get exposed to our work, that's a win for marketing.
When it comes however to the situation where the content-creator and the publisher are separate entities, I can see why DRM is constantly being worked on, because the publisher wants to 'reassure' the creator that their work is protected and the creator is relying on the publisher to market the goods hence they don't look to "pirated copies" for exposure.
Perhaps my view is a bit simplified but at this point it works well for us.
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