Policing by some corpo isn't better than policing by the government. The basis of why overreaching policing is bad doesn't depend on it. Compare DRM to someone installing surveillance in your house to preemptively "stop any potential crimes" ... namely, by you. Are you going to be OK with that just because it's some corpo doing it and not the government?
You get the point of why the above is wrong. DRM is wrong exactly for the same reason. The ethical problem with DRM is that it invades your digital privacy based on presumption of guilt.
Whether users care or don't care doesn't really affect the concept. A lot of things in digital space are less tangible for people to care becasue they are clueless, which doesn't mean these things aren't as dangerous and damaging when abused.
And those are fundamental problems, before we even get to bad consequences that you mentioned, like DRM damaging digital preservation, losing access to your purchases and so on, which are bad too, but not on the level the above is bad.
So to sum it up, DRM is always anti user in many senses.
You get the point of why the above is wrong. DRM is wrong exactly for the same reason. The ethical problem with DRM is that it invades your digital privacy based on presumption of guilt.
Whether users care or don't care doesn't really affect the concept. A lot of things in digital space are less tangible for people to care becasue they are clueless, which doesn't mean these things aren't as dangerous and damaging when abused.
And those are fundamental problems, before we even get to bad consequences that you mentioned, like DRM damaging digital preservation, losing access to your purchases and so on, which are bad too, but not on the level the above is bad.
So to sum it up, DRM is always anti user in many senses.