Ryan Lackey provides a detailed analysis, but he gets off to a bad start right at the beginning:
DRM systems embedded in general purpose computers, especially if mandated, especially if implemented in the most secure practical manner (running the system in system-high DRM mode and not allowing raw hardware access to anything at any time on the platform, rather than trying to allow concurrent open and closed operation a la CMW), and in a closed manner for revenue protection purposes (only rich people get to sign the code, or at least only the keys of rich people are widely distributed by default, and anything else requires special operations by the user), are evil.
So DRM systems are evil? Why? What makes them evil? There is no justification offered for this claim! Are we all supposed to accept it as obvious? And note that when someone says X is true, especially when Y, they also mean that X is true even if not Y. Therefore, Ryan is claiming that DRM systems embedded in general purpose computers, even if not mandated, even if not implemented in the most secure manner, even if not in a closed manner, are evil. That is, even voluntary and not all that secure DRM systems are evil! How can any software which people adopt voluntarily be evil? If Alice releases music with DRM restrictions, and Bob runs DRM compliant software to play it, which of them is evil? Is it Alice, for releasing her music with restrictions? Is it just because she encoded them in a file format, or is it evil to release any creative product and ask people not to copy it freely? Or is Bob evil, for voluntarily choosing to run DRM compliant software in order to listen to Alice's music? Or perhaps the software developer is the evil one, for giving people more options and choices in the world? One other point must be mentioned while we wait for clarification:
What I'm genuinely in terror of is #5. I'd be fairly comfortable with (1,2) from philsophical grounds (and actually, some of the uses in #2 are things which interest me). 1,2,3 are probably tolerable even from a wanting-widespread-piracy standpoint, and really, anything but #5 (and to some extent, #4) is tolerable in terms of protecting computers for anti-government use.
Are we to read this as an endorsement of the "wanting-widespread-piracy standpoint"? Is the implicit assumption here that widespread piracy is GOOD??? Well, that would certainly explain why DRM is evil in Ryan's eyes. If so, in Ryan's ideal world, every creative artist has no choice but to do nothing, or release their works with permission that anyone can copy them for free. This is not just an unfortunate consequence of technological reality, in this view. It is an outcome to be desired and even fought for, to the extent that voluntary technologies which would give people other options must be opposed from the beginning. The only evil here is the viewpoint that people must not have choices, that they must be forced into a Communist from-each-according-to-his- ability system where creative people have no choice or control over the products of their minds. Surely a libertarian such as Ryan can see the horrific evil involved in taking away freedom and choice from creative people, and he will clarify his words above.