This article in IT Week quotes a report of Insight Research which estimates that spending on DRM systems is going to reach $9bn by 2012. This gives us a good idea of the systematic cost of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) systems, a cost that will have to be borne by authors and artists with every upload into the system, as well as society at large with every access to works within that system.

IT Week also quotes the report with

"But, by and large, the focus of the DRM industry is to protect the rights of the owner of the content, not the end user."

Besides pointing out that the "owner of the content" is normally not the author or artist, I could not have said it any better.