This seems to be my week for putting geeks up on pedestals. My last entry was JWZ, this one talks about
Cory Doctorow
Cory gives the most concise definition of why DRM doesn't work I've ever heard, and if you know anything about cryptography, you'll see why DRM falls down.
But there's the rub. Alice wants Bob to buy Pirates of the
Caribbean from her. Bob will only buy Pirates of the Caribbean if
he can descramble the CSS-encrypted VOB -- video object -- on his
DVD player. Otherwise, the disc is only useful to Bob as a
drinks-coaster. So Alice has to provide Bob -- the attacker --
with the key, the cipher and the ciphertext.
There's a lot of good stuff in there about why DRM doesn't work, as well as a lot of information about why DRM ultimately won't work.
Go read it