[Windows Phone 8 General] GoodDayToDie:
Has Google Play added DRM encryption? Last I checked, it didn't have it. It does have license checks and remote kill-switch capabilities though, which are aspects of DRM (although you can get around them by sideloading).

Humble Bundle sells software, including phone and tablet apps, in the US and elsewhere. They allow re-downloading on the same account, too. No DRM, not even a license check.

Good Old Games sells software (no phone apps that I know of) and similarly allows re-downloading and has no license checks or similar.

Lots of Android app stores independent of Google exist. The only one I know of with DRM is the Kindle Fire store (I'm sure there are others, but the ones I've seen don't have DRM).

Maemo (Nokia N-series phones and PDAs/tablets) has/had apps installed as simple Debian packages, no license checks or DRM (though they may have added a DRMed store as well; I haven't checked recently).

For that matter, tons of Linux and BSD distros distribute software that way. All over the world, with no DRM.

I'm not saying it would be an easy solution to renegotiate all those licenses. I'm saying that it can be done, and could have been done right in the first place. Yes, they've made improvements lately (and I'm very glad of that) but they're still far worse than they should be (or historically have been). It's hardly as if Microsoft doesn't have the clout and legal muscle to get this if they wanted it... but no, they are part of the problem.

If you don't like it, you should fight it. Don't just passively sit by and accept it. You claim the law protects this mechanism, but laws are not made in a vacuum. These days, laws like this aren't even made in government; they're made in the industry (including Microsoft) and then sold to the politicians through their lobbyists. For that matter, I disagree with the claim that the law supports this anyhow. The DMCA is a deeply contradictory law, both with itself (anti-circumvention vs. fair use) and with established and historical law (erosion of property rights, doctrine of first sale, etc.). There have been exemptions made to it for specific purposes, such as unlocking phones, but that is itself evidence that the law is bad. The CFAA is similarly flawed, although not quite so obviously. Both have been pushed by industry lobbyists for purposes blatantly unfriendly to the public good, and those same lobbyists and their corporate paymasters keep trying to make them worse (SOPA, PIPA, trying to criminalize breaking a website's TOS, etc.). I believe it is our moral responsibility to oppose it.

So yeah, in the context of the person whose question started this discussion, the state of affairs you paint is one way to look at the situation. However, it is not the only way, it is not the inevitable way, and it is not a *good* way. Your posts above take the side of those hypocrites in the industry, who want software to be treated as a product when it comes to property (specifically intellectual property, more specifically copyright, without which the industry has no legal recourse to prohibit copying, redistribution, changing the copyright license, etc.) but to treat it as something else entirely when it comes to regulating how the software is used (which is no part of property law, IP included), or re-sold (first sale explicitly permits this), or suitability for purpose (consumer protection, "lemon laws" and such), or the basic concept of ownership (in which case, to take it from me after purchase is an act of theft, and the company would be liable for criminal punishment). You can discuss the current state of affairs without making it sound like it's perfectly reasonable and rational. Hell, under the strict letter the DMCA, an awful lot of what we do here at XDA is illegal. Fortunately, the courts are not *quite* so stupid / corrupt as to buy the entirety of the industry's preferred viewpoint.