It used to be that people who bought property became owners. This ownership of private property provided exclusive power over a object, rights to offspring or products produced by it, and governing the use of the object.
DRM eliminates this concept from anything with a computer in it, which in 2015 is most properties of significant worth. The right to govern is retained by he who has the key, which the seller keeps in order to create additional opportunity for revenue. To justify this, the seller argues that this helps reducing the initial cost of the product.
If the property then happens to produces anything of value, say data logs which can be sold, the producer also retains the right to that data by a shrink-wrap license. This is of course insane, as any such schemed used with physical property would be fast put down as fraud. You can't sell a cow, put a 40 page long shrink-wrap license on the gate, and claim thus the milk or offspring are yours. The legal system would not stand for it, especially if it was done large scale with millions of customers.
It used to be that people who bought property became owners.
Depending on who you ask, that stopped being the case the minute states started charging property tax. It's not yours, you just rent from the government. With the addition of zoning laws, it's hard to argue with that interpretation.
You can't sell a cow, put a 40 page long shrink-wrap license on the gate, and claim thus the milk or offspring are yours.
If Monsanto could prove the cow was GMO and their intellectual property, they could do almost exactly that. At the very least, they could put an injunction on the sale of cows and milk until they could verify if a patent had been broken. During which time, the farm would most likely go under.
There is a difference between the state overriding property law and private entities doing it. The state has monopoly on breaking laws, and in a democracy, is supposed to only do so when it serves the public they represent. It is this difference that allow the police to lock people up, or fine individuals. As you say, they use taxes, copyright, and patent law, all which override private property laws.
DRM however allows private entities to override property laws completely, while tricking the consumer. While Monsanto can with the help of the government prevent the sale of produce, they do not come in the night and steal it and sell it as their own property. They don't turn food into stone with the flick of a switch. I dislike Monsanto and I think they do trick people into a deal which is not obvious, but they are not even in the same league as DRM with 40 pages long licenses that updates dynamically which not a single person can understand.
Of course you can do things like that. Don't sell the cow, sell people a license to keep, pet, and feed the cow, etc. The license stipulates that the cow's milk and calves remain the property of the lessor.
How do you think software licenses work? You don't own any propiertary software, you own the license to use it under certain circumstances. You're renting it really, just with (usually) a one time payment.
...but if you purchase a car, and the car will not run without the software, did you purchase a license for the car? There is a distinction here that may be worth considering which goes counter to practical application. If a car is "owned" but the software is "leased" then there's a new kind of transactional contract that needs to be set forth in plain language...or lawyered until the cows come home...
Continuing along that line of thought: What is the role and responsibility of the manufacturer in continuing service once the service agreement on the vehicle is up?
The lines of demarcation grow hazy when you are dealing with physical ownership of property and you are governing rights management under the auspices of protecting us from ourselves.
Yes, yes, we all hate DRM. Cars are more complicated: you don't own the air that goes in one end and and comes out the other, you don't own the roads, and you don't own the property and lives you may destroy if you give a variable a stupid name or allocate some memory wrong.
My friends and I grew up doing all kinds of stupid things to our cars to make them go faster, one guy had a 5 psi turbo system pushing over 20 psi of boost because he broke the pressure sensing system. We did stupid, stupid things to our cars and generally ended up taking to them junkyard. It is a Very Good Thing it was prohibitively difficult for us to jumper in to the computer and start messing with stuff, because we would have. The more road blocks to people like us messing with their ECU's the better.
We (The US) already have laws that hold you accountable for being criminally negligent if you do a thing and cause harm to person or property. Do you really need additional protections from keeping yourself out of trouble? Is the only reason you don't do a thing is because you might be breaking the law?
We (The US) have laws that hold people accountable for trespassing and theft, but I'm guessing you still lock your doors.
A fundamental principle of engineering is protecting people from themselves, this is absolutely nothing new. Your life has been saved countless times because some engineer somewhere decided you didn't get to have a choice in something. (Maybe you like 50 ft falls, who are they to say that you should have to intentionally jump the handrail to hurt yourself?) It's Murphy's Law: if it's possible to do something stupid, somebody will and they might kill themselves and others in the process. So you make the stupid things hard to do.
In this case the stupid thing to do is messing with a computing system that handles multiple mechanical and electrical systems where a misnamed variable or some mismanaged memory could be extremely dangerous.
If you just have to tinker with something you can still buy/build a race car and take it to the track. Really, you should, it's fun.
DRM eliminates this concept from anything with a computer in it, which in 2015 is most properties of significant worth. The right to govern is retained by he who has the key, which the seller keeps in order to create additional opportunity for revenue. To justify this, the seller argues that this helps reducing the initial cost of the product.
If the property then happens to produces anything of value, say data logs which can be sold, the producer also retains the right to that data by a shrink-wrap license. This is of course insane, as any such schemed used with physical property would be fast put down as fraud. You can't sell a cow, put a 40 page long shrink-wrap license on the gate, and claim thus the milk or offspring are yours. The legal system would not stand for it, especially if it was done large scale with millions of customers.