The UK All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG) has released a Report on DRM (dated June 2006). It's surprisingly friendly to user interests, as seen in the recommendation that will most affect researchers:
...that the Government consider granting a much wider-ranging exemption to the anti-circumvention measures in the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act for genuine academic research.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
