Furdlog's post is very thought provoking, but I'm not sure I can buy into the folding chair metaphor. Inherent within that argument is the copyfighter's understanding of IP as essentially a guardianship/public trust with limited use--not ownership--of IP granted to a creator, the real owner being the public.

So while cultural norms do play into how DRM works, the problem is that the public doesn't see IP in this light. It has often been said that the average person does not understand copyright law. Granted, but they do see IP as owned by the original creator and/or publisher, as invested with some rights of ownership based on romantic notions of authorship.

A better analogy: when I was a kid, as most kids do, we all wandered around the neighborhood cutting through yards to get from one street to the next. Yards that did not have fences were seen as fair game, unless of course we knew that the yard's owner would raise hell if they caught us going through. Often times that didn't stop us as long as the owner wasn't home.

So, like the public, we had a limited sense of what ownership meant in regards to our rights to tresspass and/or get in trouble for tresspassing. But I do remember that we almost never passed through a yard with a fence, even though the gate might be unlocked or the owner might be someone who didn't mind if we walked through. DRM, even easily circumvented DRM, is like those fenced yards. As I mentioned in this post, it acts to symbolically/psychologically enhance the boundaries created through the author function, to make us uncomfortable about tresspassing.

Link courtesy of Copyfight.