NPR had an intersting segment about Roger Richman, who represents the families and estates of dead people, like Albert Einstein (negotiated the Apple endorsement and Steve McQueen (negotiated the videogame). Interestingly, he actually drafted the California legislation that protects people's posthumous rights.
Most interesting was the data point dropped in at the end, that the Robert Richman Agency was recently aquired by Gates-owned Corbis, a massive photo archive. Now, they offer Rights Representation. So you can one-stop-shop for the photo, and the right to use it.
Looks good, right? But it's just another type of DRM. Apparently you can't access any photos in the archive without getting permission from the copyright holder (Anyone up for a little social engineering? I'd love for someone to actually try this and see what happens.) What about critique, parody, or any of the many fair uses for a photo? Gates just took DRM analog. Seems we're going to be stuck with Gates DRM no matter what operating system we use.