DRM is the acronym for the words Digital Rights Management and if you have been paying attention online, or to the news, then you know that DRM is a bit of a hot button issue. End users want to have the eight to copy and share the music that they legally purchase on a CD or by downloading.
The artists who make the songs and movies however are a bit more stingy. They want users to not be able to share their music. This is mostly due to the fact that they see it as a threat to their profit margins. Of course, as your computer gains more and more advanced capabilities for media this issue only becomes more sensitive. After all, it won't be long before our computers can burn Blu-Rays. This means that computer companies have to give media companies some kind of an assurance that their intellectual property (song, audio books, TV shows, movies or music video) is going to be protected from would be pirates. Otherwise media companies would have no reason to work with the computer companies to help bring industry technology, like DVD burners, to the home user market. This being said, each company has it's own stance on DRM.
Unfortunately, setting a DRM policy is a lot like that old saying, "You can please some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time" and true to this motto it is a rare event when everyone is content with how DRM is executed on an operating system.
How rare? Well, I promise to let you know when it happens.
That being said there are a lot of people who are more unhappy than usual with the way that Windows has chosen to execute its DRM philosophy in its current operating system incarnation, Vista.
The most insidious of the problems that user's have reason to make a fuss about is the system monitoring and it's potential consequences. The system monitors all of your activity some of the triggers that make your computer think that you are trying to copy some protected media then your system will take steps to stop you from doing so. These steps may be as simple as slowing down your system or even locking you out. Don't go back to re-read.
Your eyes did not deceive you. The DRM system for Windows can lock you out of your own system, even if you happen to be the system administrator. I'll leave you to make up your own mind on what that means about Windows views of end users rights, or about the implications of constant system monitoring required to enforce this, that monitoring does not come without a cost to your systems efficiency. So be sure to think about that before you buy a brand new computer system.