I know that DRM isn't explicitly defined as encryption, but encryption is usually the apparatus that achieves the goal of DRM. In most modern situations DRM sch

I know that DRM isn't explicitly defined as encryption, but encryption is usually the apparatus that achieves the goal of DRM. In most modern situations DRM schemes involve carefully implemented encryption. But ultimately, the content is being defended with encryption. If there's a dossier in an office somewhere, because I visited a doctor, I would want the clerks charged with handling that dossier to exert control over it. If they're saving it to disk on a server in a basement IT closet, I'd want it encrypted. Meanwhile, if I was an employee at a production company, producing a television episode, I'd probably be expected to exert the same degree of control over the fragments of unfinished content, as they trickle in from the soundstage and are finished up in post production, but then, they undergo a different type of encryption, when locked up in DRM for release to paying subscribers. The question is more an ethical one, not a technical one. If we have encryption as a tool we might use, when is its use respectable, and when is its defeat admirable, and why? Why is it cool when we crack DVDCSS, but awful when the NSA breaks into Google and bypasses their SSL firewall? Are we just hypocrites who want to have their cake and eat it too, or is there an appreciable measure of difference between the two?