I raised this question in the comments section on the news post of Microsoft's response to the DRM petition, and I will raise it here again.

Who the hell in their right mind, as a gamer, would advocate for DRM???

Something sketchy is behind this, almost as if Microsoft created this petition themselves to bring back DRM. It's not unlikely, especially when you consider Microsoft all too often fakes public opinion. In Japan they HIRED people to attend Kinect demos and buy 360s. There's news that Microsoft employees are allegedly trolling Reddit posting pro-Xbox One comments. Could it be that Microsoft is attempting to manipulate the public's perception on DRM policies?

In addition, if you look at this from a managing standpoint, it's horrible for the public opinion of your company. Why would Microsoft so readily heed to some random petition when they have long since stated that they will remove DRM. My friends, something very strange is going on. There has to be a great incentive for Microsoft to bring back DRM, like a massive expected increase in profits. Pretty sad that gaming isn't about the games, it's all about the green.

TLDR Microsoft may have created the petition themselves as an excuse to bring back DRM to milk more money from gamers.

EDIT 1 - People are arguing that digital downloads keep game prices low. This is not necessarily true. Steam has low prices because of competition from other firms, not because of the convenience of digital downloads. On PC nothing prevents me from switching to another service like Origin, etc. If you buy an Xbox One, you are stuck in Microsoft's ecosystem and they can charge whatever price they wish. If digital downloads really do keep prices low, why is content on XBLA always overpriced?

EDIT 2 - Some people believe DRM helps publishers increase game sales and the amount of money developers earn. I challenge someone to find a correlation linking DRM to higher game sales. You won't. Look at EA games. The release of Spore, a DRM plagued game, had horrible sales. If a company doesn't trust consumers with their games, why should we, the gamers, entrust them with money?

In addition, some people aren't aware of the fact that Microsoft's terms of service don't guarantee lifetime ownership of a game. Once Microsoft terminates Xbox Love support for the Xbox One, there would be no means to conduct random DRM checks, thus rendering all games unplayable. DRM is evil.

Some people compare this new DRM to Steam, but what they don't realize is that PC is more or less eternal. Even if people stop using Windows, there will always be means to emulate it and play your games (i.e. Wine).