The copy is essence of what a computer does. A computer can essentially only do some math and copying.
If you ask me to install some DRM software (or maybe even some hardware containing DRM stuff as in HDMI) you are asking me to run additional complex software where the only purpose is to restrict the functionality of my computer.
I do that, since I like some movies and other things I get this way. However the software serves no purpose to me as the user. It is there to do Digital Restriction Management.
Meanwhile however we have Spotify and are back in the walled garden.
Movie industry unfortunately went directly from physical media (with stupid DRM restrictions - my favorite one is that on a "legal" DVD player I am forced to watch a short sequence on how bad pirates are, on my "illegal" DRM free player I can skip that part) to streaming. Making sure I don't "own" a thing and making sure my computer runs software limiting what I can do with my computer.
I don't disagree with your assessment, except I'd say DRM doesn't exist to restrict the machine - the goal is to restrict the user. Which is necessary, when users aren't trustworthy.
But I'd disagree that DRM doesn't serve you a purpose. It serves the purpose of establishing trust and enforcing conditional exchanges of information. The alternative, like you imply, is no communication, or communication through a different medium that doesn't involve your hardware at all.
Here in meatspace, we have this notion of ownership and property rights. DRM is a mechanism to protect those rights. They may not be perfect, and they might not always make much business sense but that is their intent.
If you look for a comparison: DRM is like a book publisher printing books on special paper which prevents copying and which can only be read in a specific angle so I can't easily take notes containing quotes from the book. All to protect those rights. (Edit: actually that example is missing a piece - you need special reading glasses to be able to read it, that's what DRM is doing on my machine)
And yes - Napster was an issue for the music industry. Suddenly their content was there for free and easily accessible. But then there was Apple, giving music away DRM-free with even better usability and for an acceptable fee.
That's a nice way of phrasing it from the business point of view. From the customer point of view, it's degrading the product and artificially limiting the ways one can interact with it. It goes against the fundamental principle of general-purpose computing: as a computer owner, I get to tell what the computer can and cannot do with the data it has.
DRM in its most general form exists as a way to (try to) make some data follow a different set of rules than the rules of the medium. It's an attempt of making bits have colour[0]. Since bits don't, and can't, have colour, you have to simulate this by changing the rules of the universe in which those bits are processed. It's practically impossible to do correctly, hence the product degradation that always accompanies DRM schemes.
Adding insult to injury, DRM is usually employed to force a recurring revenue stream in a context where it fundamentally doesn't make sense.
--
Barring quantum technology, I don't think this is possible.
There are plenty of issues with DRM from a practical and philosophical level. But I think calling it malware is disingenuous. Alice doesn't cede her rights over her data by transmitting it to Bob, and DRM is how Alice protects the data when Bob is a malicious actor. If Bob wants to gain more privileges over all his data, he doesn't need to accept communication from Alice.
That said, buggy DRM can be atrocious and cost more money than it saves. I know plenty of folks who pirate software they own because it's easier than an legal install. But that's a UX problem, not a DRM problem.