EMarketer.com has a post that says Insight Research expects spending on DRM this year to be $1 Billion and increase to $9 Billion in 2012.

From the Insight Research report:

"DRM evolved to serve corporations to deal with information piracy, peer-to-peer file sharing, and various regulatory requirements," noted Robert Rosenberg of Insight. "DRM did not arise to meet the needs of end users, and in fact, it may be said to have evolved to spite the end user.

"While organizations like Creative Commons have emerged to balance the respective — and sometimes conflicting — rights of artists and creators, media companies, and individuals who share content, by and large the focus of the DRM industry is to protect the rights of the owner of the content, not the end user."

Wouldn't it be great if companies that are now spending millions on DRM schemes spent that money on delivering better products? Could you imagine the innovation in digital medial offerings if billions of dollars were invested over the next 5 years in new products and services rather than in trying to lock users down with DRM? The industry is planning to literally waste billions of dollars as we know that no DRM scheme yet has not been cracked or circumvented.