Me, I think Adobe is doing the new DRM in response to MacMillan's TOR experiment.
If going DRM-free made no difference in piracy rates, why encrypt at all?
So Adobe is trying to convince the BPHs that instead of ditching DRM, they need to double down with tougher DRM.
Problem is, a tougher Adept DRM will make little market impact in most developed markets like the US because generic ADEPT ebooks make such a small portion of the ebook market. Amazon, Apple, and Nook control 86-90% of the market. More, epub pirates, faced with an "unbreakable" Adept DRM, can always buy from B&N and strip that DRM instead.
Which pretty much guarantees that publishers will see no change in piracy rates.
Sooner or later they're bound to realize that encryption DRM, whether interoperable or not, does nothing for them. Even then, I don't expect publishers to give up on the placebo of DRM, merely to switch to watermark DRM.
