What is DRM?
Digital Rights Management is a term for the process of assigning value to digital content and making it possible to distribute that content in such a way that allows people to realize value for their work.

Why should I care about DRM?
DRM is the way that people can see value for their creations, which means that content will find its way online in such a way that helps people get paid for their work. When there is a good way for people to be compensated for their efforts, the circuit will close and there can be an infusion of quality content that the web has been lacking to date.

DRM in action
Currently, there are spot-solutions of DRM in specific industries, and there are some solutions that are even as narrow as a single content provider. Some magazines, for example, provide subscription access to content, and research reports are available to be purchased. There has been a lot of froth in the industry, with many companies attempting to build a generalizable solution, from complete unknown companies (most of which have disappeared) to huge companies like IBM and Microsoft. To date, progress toward an ubiquitious solution has been slow, for several reasons:

1. Mistrust by the content providers
2. Technology limitations (formats, delivery, cost)
3. Ease of use
4. Too little security
5. Paradoxically, too much security (relates to ease of use)

DRM and Free Content
Interestingly, DRM does not stand in opposition to the notion of free content per se. The thing to remember about DRM is that it puts the control of the content in the hands of the content provider. If they want to distribute the content without any charges, then they can do so. In actual fact much of the world already operates this way - the paid content promoted by a lot of free samples, with academic papers available for free and so on.