Is DRM good or bad?

Today DRM(Digital Rights Management) is mostly used for protecting music and video media. You can also find some java applets that are DRM protected. Most people, especially on the internet, think this is bad news. No more sharing between friends and sometimes the newly purchased media can only be played on the specific device you purchased the media for.

What good can there be for the us the users with a system like that? For the producers of content there would be some benefits, they can make sure they get paid for what they do. Maybe this also causes prices to go down and making media easily available. Still the benefits for the users versus the cost seems to be low, the music owners keep the prices too high for many peoples tastes.

I say we have to wait and see. DRM is in its early stages. The strict device dependancy is overcome by domain functionality in for example OMA V2. And there maybe other uses for DRM that are not around yet that actually can make life easier for us.

Think about bus tickets or season tickets to your favourite sport events.
Those tickets could actually be DRM protected licenses that gives you access. DRM is all about 'rights'.

When you go abroad you could purchase your subway ticket from home, downloading your DRM license and use this to prove your right to use the subway on arrival. The actual content is now of secondary value, it is the license that is valuable, in this case there may not be any content at all.

DRM could be used as a voting ticket. When you are about to vote you will receive a DRM license and you can use this to prove your right to vote.

OMA DRM can already handle these cases today as there are many possible forms for a license. It can be time based or count based. A voting license could have a count for every vote you have the right to place. A season ticket used on the subway could be time based giving you the right to use the subway for a certain amount of time. DRM also allows interval based licensed or accumulated time based licenses. You could have a ticket that gives you use of the subway for a month taken from the first time you use it or you could have a license to use the subway for an accumulated time of say 1 day.

Maybe DRM actually can make life easier for us?