Digital Home Thoughts: Researcher: DRM Has Deep Flaws

"Digital rights management (DRM) technology has deep flaws despite the hope of content providers that encrypted files will deter illegal file sharing, a computer security researcher said Monday. DRM is a catch-all term for a variety of methods used to limit content sharing. Techniques include digital encryption of songs and encoded limits on the number of times content can be accessed. But DRM technologies are far from foolproof, and the ones developed so far have been easily circumvented by adept hackers, said Ian Brown, a senior research manager at the Cambridge-MIT Institute in England. DRM won't protect the music and film industries, which have spent the last decade lobbying for new laws to protect their content but neglected trying to find better ways to monetize their offerings, he said. Bands such as U2 and the Grateful Dead use their music more as a promotional tool, relying on touring and merchandise for revenue, he said."

I had a hard time understanding exactly what the loophole being mentioned here is. It looks like all Mr. Brown is concerned about is the "analog loophole", i.e. the fact that nothing is preventing a bootlegger from sticking a camera or microphone near the source of the DRM content and then bootlegging that copy. I know for a fact that multiple software companies are doing research where they would embed watermarks in the actual frames of a video itself so I guess his fears are being addressed there (at least for video). Other than that, what else can one do?