This is where pirate party ideas differ from anti-IP libertarian ideas.
From Mises Economics Blog:

"On the subject of Digital Rights Management, however, Nina has presented something of a challenge. From a private enterprise perspective, there would seem to be nothing wrong with DRM-like technologies, even if DRM itself has its own problems. It is an attempt to restrict the distribution of a product in the hope of greater commercialization and sales of the product. It might be a bad choice. Consumers may not like it. It might not eventually stand up to the long-run market test. But there would not seem to be anything particularly anti-market about the concept. It is like a trade secret, up to the discretion of the producer to keep or reveal."

My personal view is that DRM should be legal, but only if DRM circumvention is legal too. Kinda like how ISPs are allowed to inconvenience you with bandwidth caps etc. if you only sign up to the cheap plan. Inconvenience is legit, lawyers aren't.

PPNZ policy is that DRM itself should be illegal. What do you think?

Not necessarily. I can fully imagine things being sold on a 2 tier basis, full functionality no DRM versions and support for premium customers, and something else for the plebs which has enough purely annoying stuff in it. The idea being people that don't want to be annoyed will become premium.

Annoying legitimate customers can have a commercial purpose, especially where there are large overheads and capital costs involved. In the air travel industry, they call it economy class.

I must say that the only DRM scheme that I approve of is Valve's Steam. This is probably because Steam acts as content distribution, authentication and DRM... Ok, so it is also like iTunes + FairPlay, but music and games are different. Valve's Steam and a Steam account actually adds the benefit of being able to play the game on any computer just by logging into your steam account and downloading the files to play. This is why I approve of Steam.

Consider this a vote against Steam. It's pretty innocuous as far as DRM goes, but it's still DRM, and as such I don't buy games from Steam. I'd much rather get them from GOG.com

I would like to think that the success of the Humble Indie Bundle, among other things, prove that DRM is unnecessary. That might be being a bit of a logical stretch, however. There are many reasons for people to contribute to the Humble Indie Bundle including simply to support the sales strategy, and because it was highly publicised on the internet. As such, this result doesn't really prove anything about an environment where such behaviour is the norm.

Despite this, I firmly believe that DRM is not only unnecessary, but actively harmful. Firstly, I think in many cases allowing the noncommercial copying of a work increases awareness of it, and as such encourages continued sales, and a community. DRM interferes with this natural spread of a work's popularity, and paying game reviewers to rave about a game is unlikely to work as an effective substitute. People trust their friends' taste in games more than IGN, usually. Secondly, DRM is (generally) ineffective in preventing piracy of a work, instead only inconveniencing and/or alienating your existing customer base. Even in situations where the DRM prevents pirates from playing for an extended period of time (such as Assassin's Creed II), it usually has a much more harmful impact on existing customers (again, see Assassin's Creed II). This makes them more likely to resort to piracy for future works, and leads to a bad relationship with the company.

While Steam is generally touted as an example of DRM done right (that is, relatively unintrusive, and providing additional value) I would argue that all the services provided by Steam could equally well be provided by a platform unencumbered by DRM. GOG.com (as mentioned in my previous post) sells older, classic games fully DRM free. It ties purchases to your user account, allowing you to redownload any games you've previously purchased as long as their servers are up (the same restriction applies to Steam -- if their servers go down, the service of being able to redownload games you've bought but deleted will be unavailable). This is one of the features of Steam that is commonly cited as making up for the DRM they apply to the content they make available. The other aspects -- the user community and rich selection of indie titles -- could equally be provided without DRM.

EdisonCarter:
From your comment, it sounds as if you think I am under the misimpression that DRM is an unfortunate necessity in the marketplace. This is incorrect -- I believe it is possible, and in fact easier, to have a vibrant content industry without the use of such restrictive, anti-social measures as Digital Restrictions Management. If you merely hit reply, and that's why your post looks like a response to mine, then I apologise As you were!

PS: I apologise for the length of this post. I do not have the time to reword it more concisely. Exam in ten minutes <_<

Heh, thanks. It went... acceptably, but not well. I did better in my other exams. The subject was Computer Vision.

Incidentally, a general apology for being out of contact with the pirate party recently, but I've just moved in to a new flat with my fiancee, and we do not have internet yet, unfortunately. Also still in end-of-semester exam-and-assignment hell, so once I get through this, I'll even send in a membership form.

Do we have a bank account yet? If so, I can donate

Absolutely agree. DRM should be legal as an alternative to copyright. If a company wants to try hiding an idea, I can't see a reason for making this illegal, any more than I can see a reason for making it illegal for people to try to figure out the idea. However, if a company wants to try hiding an idea, then they are not contributing to the progress of science and arts, so shouldn't be eligible for copyright protection (since the purpose of copyright in the first place is to promote the progress of science and arts). I think this is both right, and also potentially beneficial by bringing libertarians on board.

Further to this, I think copyright holders should have to disclose their method / release the work in an accessible form too, in order to qualify for copyright (e.g. source code for computer programmes, HTML for books, musical score/lyrics for songs, script for plays/movies). Part of the reasoning behind requiring disclosure of patents was that inventors disclose their idea, and in return are granted an exclusive right. In the past, copyrighted material would be copied as it was written, so the ideas used in the writing would be evident in the copies. Nowadays, this is not always the case. With computer software, for instance, source code is written, but only object code is copied. Consequently, people who hold copyright on software get an exclusive right, but never actually contribute to arts/science, which was the justification for allowing that right in the first place. Again, I think this is both right, and also potentially beneficial by bringing other people on board (free / open source software advocates, blind people who can't read printed books, and anyone who likes singing lyrics, trying to learn to play a song they like, or searching through a work to find a quote they remember.)