How is it meaningfully different? Both exist to ensure that each person consuming the media has paid for it. Sure, in practice pay-walled articles can be easily copied to non-drmed formats, but no one does this and the motivation is the same.
It doesn't become DRM just because some people choose not to make a backup copy. That would be like saying everything I can see with my eyes but choose not to photograph has DRM on it (or effectively is DRM). That's clearly not true, as I could at any time decide to photograph my surroundings and the objects I'm photographing aren't going to restrict my camera.