"With DRM I could prevent you accessing the document unless your machine and configuration met my standards for security. Indeed, I could prevent you accessing at all unless you were in a secure environment using a designated id. I could allow you access for a specific period. I could stop you printing it or sharing it....."
That sort of stuff sounds great on paper but rarely works well in practice, especially with users who don't understand it properly (which is most of them).
In reality, the helpdesk gets involved wasting costly hours sorting issues where Sarah can't print her document she needs because Bruce in his ignorance though it might be a good idea to turn that off, while crafty Alex decides to whip out the smartphone and take a photo of the screen instead which then gets automatically OCRed by Evernote and stored goodness-knows-where. But at least the information can now be printed.
DRM serves little purpose but to create headaches, because ultimately the final interface to the human being (e.g. display) stays just as weak as ever.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
