DRM is going to live long

It's a bit more complicated than that.

True, HDCP shows a pretty aggressive spread of content protection into wires. BluRay doubled down on protecting physical discs even during the DeCSS art movement, when most of us were starting to view such efforts as futile.

Smashwords and other indie ebook publishers vs. Amazon and Google Books... it's a mixed field in eBooks, with DRM admittedly still largely dominant.

That's not wholly dissimilar to the status of AAC vs. mp3 in the marketplace for the first six years of iTunes though. DRM lost that round.

Will that happen again though? It's really impossible to know.

That exception relied on the particular marketplace factors at the time, such as Amazon's desire to spend a large amount of money to challenge Apple's monopoly, relying on the working examples of other unencumbered music sellers, like eMusic, to convince music publishers DRM wasn't necessary, and the widespread use of mp3s prior to the development of the mature digital music market.

We sometimes make the mistake of forecasting about technology based on first principles, imagining a utopia or dystopia enabled by technology, then running with it. It's easy to ignore the many contingencies involved, such as human institutions, cultural factors, even chance.

Tangential, but relevant, a recent Freakonomics podcast on "The Folly of Prediction:" http://freakonomics.com/2011/09/14/new-freakonomics-radio-po...