The fact that it does not always work, is in no way a proof of ineffectiveness.
Otherwise, the tax system, speed limit signs, front door locks, and glass windows are also “completely ineffective.”
He is literally telling you, from his own experience in his company, it’s effective. Don’t cite a sloppily-produced research paper from somewhere to make him deny reality.
I'm not, I'm citing their own comment in which they describe taking down 20,000+ illegal streams of their already DRM-"protected" content on launch day. He's describing it not being effective at all.
Glass windows, speed limit signs, the tax system (what?) provide value to the people affected by them. DRM is a pure negative for customers.
By all means keep taking down illegal streams. I'm not excusing the people providing them. I'm saying maybe stop treating every paying customer as if they're going to do that to the detriment of the service provided. Because it is negatively affecting the service.
I am telling you flatly that the users who are producing the streams have absolutely no concern or effect from the DRM. Most probably are completely unaware of it. It's quite literally as simple as plugging your phone into your computer with a $15 cable and pressing the Cast button on a webpage.
We as nerds are privileged to recognize that the $15 HDMI capture card in the above scenario is playing fast and loose with HDCP; maybe we understand systems like ContentID that don't rely on any of this; maybe we recognize that there could be stenographic data in the output that can identify us.
Anyway my objective is to emphasize that the lack of data isn't sufficient to imply a false hypothesis. Please don't exaggerate your point in an attempt to 'balance' an argument that doesn't seem likely to support a conclusion that content piracy would be much worse without DRM.