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"As for DRM, I support its overall objectives. Content providers and copyright holders should be able to charge for their content if they so choose -- as long as they are following commonly accepted laws and traditions. It's the American way.
"But DRM is often swung as a sword by a drunken warrior blithely unaware of the damage he is causing."
-- Roger Grimes, 2005-11-18, InfoWorld, Security Advisor column, "Trusted computing and DRM: Friend or foe?"
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That's really not a good generalization. (Personally, I don't even think of simple copy-protection as "DRM" except in an academic sense as a degenerate case.) Some DRM systems are reasonably thought-out attempts to manage digital rights, just as the name implies. (And yes, it's true that some are not but use the TLA anyhow.) Enforcement of digital rights policies -- trying to ensure that the DRM system isn't simply sidestepped -- is, and will always be, problematic; and some DRM systems that I consider well thought-out were thought out using initial assumptions or goals that I find suboptimal or distasteful, but "clever hacks that prevent duplication" describes a) the stuff that predates widespread use of the term 'DRM' (which you mentioned), b) stuff that gets implemented instead of real DRM, and c) components of DRM systems that involve a lot more than mere copy protection.
Sony's audio CD DRM was an especially abysmal case, flawed in design as well as in implementation (and if what I've read is true, flawed all the way back to its very motive).
"The problem with DRM is that all of a sudden, counter-hacks were made illegal."
Well yeah, the DMCA sucks and then some. :-(
But that's not "the problem with DRM", it's a problem with the DMCA and with some corporations' approaches to DRM. "The problem" with DRM -- problems actually -- are that it is difficult to prevent people from simply stepping outside the DRM system (hence the "clever hacks" often used) and that some folks are going to employ it in really assinine ways (as is a problem with nearly every tool, computer-related or otherwise).
"DRM" is far more than "how to inconvenience legitimate consumers of entertainment". It also includes the systems a magazine publisher might install to track photos licensed from elsewhere to make sure the magazine doesn't inadvertently use a photo outside what uses have been paid for, or that any corporation might use to track which proprietary information employees have permission to divulge to whom.
It's an interesting field, for all that most current attempts seem to still be fumbling at various parts of the problem.