OP: You have a valid point, and it probably does hurt adoption, but I for one like the NITs partly because Nokia *doesn't* load it up with DRM. If it was individual apps that you could choose to download, that would be one thing, but the content distributors would demand DRM, and to make an iStuff-like experience, that would likely go deep into the OS.
One thought though... I don't know whether it's technically legal in your country, but I would argue that torrenting a movie you already own to save the bother of ripping it, etc., is perfectly ethical. That's what I'd do, anyway. Sure, you still have to convert it, but I find that an SD movie run through 2 passes with tablet-encode doesn't take much more than 20 or 30 minutes, which is fine if you think ahead. I agree with what you're saying, but I'd rather Nokia stayed true to their current approach. Something of that sort may be needed to beat Apple, but personally, the last thing I want is a marginally less restrictive Linux-based iPhone.