> Look, nobody likes DRM. It's an irritating expense for movie studios, and one that doesn't even work very well

That's exactly my point. It doesn't work for preventing piracy, which only leads one to conclude that since these studios push for DRM so fiercely, they have some other motives at play, while claiming that it's about piracy. This only doubles the reasons to oppose them, since they are hiding their motives, which are most probably not good for the public.

> The reason they push DRM is because they don't have a better idea for how to prevent/impede people from distributing the movie for free before the studio can make its money back.

If you claim they are so innocent, but just clueless, then there is a known rule for them - if you don't know what to do - sit and do nothing (until you figure out what to do). Doing the wrong thing (DRM) only makes things worse! They are naturally upset about piracy, but it's not a valid reason to push for unethical and crooked methods like DRM which achieve the opposite purpose - insult legitimate users and have zero effect on pirates.

DRM is always unethical. I'm not delusional about it. It's prone to abuse, like any kind of overbroad policing scheme. Such kind of examples are to be expected from DRM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
I.e. users should never trust DRM schemes to respect their privacy, since DRM by definition doesn't trust the user. Trust is always mutual. I also explained why DRM is unethical in essence here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381153 Please try to explain this idea to your contacts amongst studio execs, if they have hard time understanding that they are supporting such unethical practices (DRM).

> I'm asking for suggestions on what you think would work instead of DRM.

That's a valid thing to ask. The answer is well known. Treat customers with respect, and you'll get respect in return. It was proven time and again by various DRM free distributors (like GOG for gaming), which have a loyal following of users who respect them for treating users as normal beings, rather than despicable criminals by default. That's the way to reduce piracy - increase the legitimate user base using respect and encouragement to buy, instead of using preemptive policing stick. Make content easily accessible, instead of making it barely accessible with DRM electric fences.

> If you're selling a movie, it's hard to compete with people who are giving it away for free.

In order to compete with piracy, legitimate content has to, you know - actually compete! I.e. compete where it's possible to compete. Not in price (that's not possible, even though prices often can be lower than they are), but in usability and ease of access and etc. DRM always degrades usability and quality of the content. Always - let this settle in the mind of studio execs. DRMed stuff can not possibly compete with what pirates offer (quality and usability wise).

In practice, for film industry (or for any other digital industry - gaming, book publishing, music and so on), this would mean - start selling files. No DRM and strings attached. Easy and simple. People buy - they watch it where they want, on any device they want, whenever they want and etc. That's what pirated content offers. Streaming should be actually made a convenience, and not as a method to reduce usability. I.e. streaming service should explicitly offer an option to save the stream as DRM free file for time / device shifting and etc. Currently streaming is presented not as convenience, but as a restriction (i.e. come and see only here, only on this platform and only now, but not elsewhere or other time). This should go away if studios really want to reduce piracy. Let them offer the same level of usability as pirates do. Without such option, how do they possible even expect to compete with superior (but pirated) option? This will encourage people to buy, rather than pirate stuff. Since many are surely willing to support the creators.

There always will be some who pirate - they have to come to grips with that. But there is a big chunk of "pirates" who are simply put off by DRM idiocy and disrespectful behavior of distributors. These people can be won over to become legitimate users, if distributors would treat them with due respect. The idea is quite simple, but somehow it "escapes" the understanding of many distributors/publishing/content producing execs.

But to be honest, I'm not convinced yet that they are just clueless. Too many things point in different direction - i.e. some ulterior motives which drive them to push for DRM/DMCA. I'd be glad if that wasn't true.