Yeah, the article certainly goes a bit over the top. As far as drm goes though, the lock analogy doesn't hold. You can't lockpick a house and then distribute unlimited unlocked free copies of it. DRM only needs to be broken once and can be widely distributed, but makes the experience worse for regular customers. There are tons of examples of this all over. Netflix only streams in 720p to browsers (except for edge). Video games with drm can be impossible to run on computers with unusual setups (Sure, I get cheating can be a problem, but this even happens for some single player games). Sometimes software will refuse to work because it is trying to "phone home" to verify a license while some servers are down.
But yeah, generally I think this article isn't the best on the subject. Just hadn't been posted on this site, so I thought it would be good to discuss.
The lock analogy isn't perfect, but it's qualitatively correct. The assertion is that locks that are easily defeated necessarily have no legitimate purpose.
DRM, like my front door lock, serves the purpose of deterring casual theft, not of eliminating all possibility of theft.
There are better ways to do that than DRM, and DRM is more of a pain and risk to legitimate owners than door locks are. But the over-zealousness of anti-DRM crusaders leads them to extend their arguments to ridiculous extremes. That's what bothers me: if DRM does more harm than good (as I believe), why use laughably false and disingenuous arguments to make the case?
But yeah, generally I think this article isn't the best on the subject. Just hadn't been posted on this site, so I thought it would be good to discuss.