@crenca, you make some really good points and I like where you took the thought exercise.
The long-term effects of MQA success and what I call the “Dolby Innovation Paradox” must be considered here. There will be a serious problem if MQA becomes the Dolby of music audio, and innovation is stuck in the hands of a commercial entity that has no incentive to innovate. Mike Moffat & Jason Stoddard of Schiit state idea this well at about 9:49 into this video interview by John Darko.
Let’s not get stuck on whether it is DRM or not. This could be a much larger problem than “DRM” ever was. DRM has been shown to be breakable over and over. Dolby has not.
There is one serious busienss issue with MQA, and you can be sure they are thinking about it: MQA has to become the defacto standard before bandwidth increases make the folding irrelevant. the M and A in MQA still apply, but the Q only has a short lifespan.