Let's ask ourselves this question after reading the following statement:
"Ultimately, the reality of sophisticated DRM technology is about far more than Napster, online entertainment and copyright law. [...] It is about constructing a civil digital society in the Internet Age, where rules created for and by its citizens can be implemented and respected wherever and whenever legitimate interests are in play."
In my view, there is only one rebuttal against this statement: that it will be impossible to design a DRM system that can implement rules "created for and by its citizens". I am not so sure whether that's actually true, and so I think it's still interesting to look at whether a "symmetric" DRM system that protects and expresses interests of all the parties involved, not only of the recording industry, can be designed on a technological level. I don't think any quasi-religious opposition against DRM is helpful in this debate.
BTW: the statement was made by Victor Shear, founder and then-CEO of Intertrust, in a Congressional hearing back in 2001. But I think one should argue about this statement without taking too much into account who made it.
To me, some of the most important and complex questions in current Internet law are about how to design trust relationships in a digital network society. (I understand "trust relationships" in a very broad sense, so this is not restricted to copyright problems in any sense.) This may be achieved with or without DRM. The underlying problem - how do we translate off-line trust relationships into the online world - will persist even if we abandon DRM.