Time Magazine ran an article last week about DRM. It gets alot right, and speaks in non geek terms:

Off the record, most executives--on the technology side at least--will tell you that DRM is a dinosaur that's waiting for the asteroid to hit. It's just a matter of when the music industry will stop assuming its customers are all criminals.

and, on why Big Media should back off on non commercial sharing of digital media (meaning folks who swap cds, or download a track here and there):

To be clear: most of us really are criminals. Almost everybody owns a little stolen music. But a little piracy can be a good thing. Sure, O.K., I ripped the audio of the Shins' Phantom Limb off a YouTube video. But on the strength of that minor copyright atrocity, I legally bought two complete Shins albums and shelled out for a Shins concert. The legit market feeds off the black market. Music execs just need to figure out how to live with that. (And count themselves lucky. When it comes to movies, consumers actually do act like hardened criminals. The real pirate war is being fought in Hollywood.)

The article is also a good short primer on what DRM is and why there is a controversy around it, in layman's terms. If you need to explain DRM why you don't like it to a parent, or non geeky friend, this is a good article to send them.