As to the Doctorow article:
If he wants to give away his material in an attempt to get revenues elsewhere, or via his followers making extraneous purchases, that's his choice. The great thing about contemporary copyright is that it lets you do that, if you so choose.
As to DRM, I have to say that some of his arguments don't quite fly, which naturally won't stop him repeating them indefinitely.
• Let's face it, authors in particular have limited venues to earn other sources of revenue once payment for the words goes out the window.
• Many collaborative art forms, especially costly ones like movies -- even small ones -- will have tremendous funding challenges if they can't collect revenues from viewings. Is anyone really going to buy a commemorative mug for Tarkovsky's [u]Nostalghia[u]?
• Does it make sense to walk away from revenue, because some people are just going to pirate it anyway?
• The idea that DRM in any way, shape or form facilitates government surveillance is, how should I say, slightly amusing. E.g. your location can already be tracked via GPS, which is essentially an open and unprotected system. Same with IP's, cell phone tower locators, subway cards (the NYPD routinely scans Metrocards to see where someone has been), toll collections, etc etc -- none of which use DRM.
• There are lots of artists who release work without DRM who still languish in obscurity.
• It's unclear how well Radiohead did with its "pay what you want" model with
In Rainbows. However, they didn't repeat the experiment with their latest release, so....
However, I do have to commend him on having a sense of humor about XKCD busting his chops.