DRM could be cool if, rather than cryptographically preventing copying, it would encode complicated licensing agreements especially if it effectively, when transmitting, rewrites the license for the recipient.

This could be guaranteed by laws rather than tech. Laws don't do much to protect big companies from the little people. That's why DRM is currently about technical solutions. But laws can have a huge impact on protecting little people from big companies. That's why big companies lobby!

I don't doubt that such 'license encoding DRM' as I envision will be abused by media publishers by linking it to cryptographic protection. But the underlying idea is pretty nice.