Be Wary of Digital Righte Management (DRM)

I have just been reading an article in which Bill Gates is justifying the introduction of digital rights management into Windows Media Centre. In essence he is saying that the content producers own the Intellectual Property (IP) and can put whatever rights they like on it. If there are no restrictions the the Media Centre will play the content, but if the producer has put restrictions on it using DRM, then the media centre will respect those rights.

There seems to be a large flaw in this argument which is what makes some people (myself included) wary of Digital Rights Management. IP holders are granted the rights that they have to control content by the state to give people an incentive to innovate. But those rights are not absolute. There are certain freedoms that everyone has (like allow people to include small extracts of a whole work for use in a new work). The issue with DRM is that is does not necessarily also enforce those freedoms. So if a content producers adds DRM to his IP and then distributes he may give you less rights than you are legally entitled.