DRM helps no one and frustrates readers because if the device you got the original book on dies, you've pretty much lost the book and need to buy it again.
DRM does not stop pirating either because the people who put up pirated books tend to be the same people who can crack a DRM code, unlike your average reader who can't.
And there are numerous programs available on the web (one is an add on for calibre) that breaks DRMs so they can be read on different readers. I remember buying an ebook once and finding out it was only readable on kindle-compatible readers (I didn't have a device that read kindle books at the time, aside from my PC), so I'd have been SoL if that hadn't been available. I'm generally a law-abiding person, but the idea that I could buy a book for full price and not be able to read it on any device I owned was just annoying as heck.
And the way the book industry is going is away from the old model of advances and print.
A retreat from advances by small and e-book only presses is troubling to me, as it demonstrates a lack of faith in their own ability to garner sales at even a certain minimum threshold that would "sell out" such an advance. If they're reluctant to gamble even 2000-3000 bucks up front against future sales, how good can they be at getting an author's books out there into the world where potential buyers will find them?
And it's not clear a shift to higher royalties means more money for authors, even if those royalties are quite high compared to what's standard for publishers who pay advances. Maybe for top selling titles, but I'm guessing that most small or boutique presses, whether print or digital only, sell a few hundred, or at most a couple thousand copies of each book, not tens of thousands.
I don't know about the Romance Writers of America, but some writers' professional associations only accept publishers as "membership qualifying markets" if they grant advances of a certain amount, regardless of how much sales revenue the book may generate. The SFWA recently voted to allow self published authors who've exceeded certain sales figures to be members, but they don't recognize writers who have signed contracts with royalty-only publishers, even if the royalty percentages are quite high.