but DRM is not about goverment control, nor elimination of personal freedoms
I beg to differ -- every mechanism that prevents me from making a personal backup copy or enable me to copy snippets of an audio or video production for illustrative purposes or whatever *is* an elimination of personal freedoms, since these have historically been classified as 'fair use', and are completely legitimate.
DRM locking everything down while throwing the key away means one can no longer practise those privileges. How is that not an elimination of personal freedoms?
If the end result is that 99% of the population loses these freedoms that they did have in the past, something is wrong.
There are many good reasons for things like backup copies: Not having to leave your original CD's in a 100F+ degree car in the summer, not having sticky toddler fingerprints all over your original DVD's, being able to have an off-site backup copy of a $$$$$$ product CD in case of fire or what not. Anything that prevents those fair use copies from being carried out, does infringe on personal freedoms. Current legislation specifically allows people to make those backups, except more and more the media companies are essentially preventing you from doing exactly that by technical means... so the end result is "Sure, you can make a backup copy -- good luck trying, especially since it's a DMCA violation to try to figure out how the lock-out works"