Sep
7
2010

All about Digital Rights Management (DRM)

An article by webNivaran Comments

Digital Rights Management (DRM) refers to any scheme used to protect the copyright of digital content using a system of encryption that often includes remote monitoring and control by the copyright owners. The development of the various forms of DRM has largely been driven by the large media companies as a response, they say, to the effect of large scale copying on their revenues rather than rely on the passive protection of copyright law these companies have gone on the offensive with active digital rights management. DRM encompasses a range of embedded software and hardware measures for all digital media that attempt to physically stop unauthorized use and copying. Since DRM at least appears to be a method of enforcing copyright, any discussion of DRM must include a discussion of copyright itself. The advantages and disadvantages of DRM for the copyright owner and the consumer and the legal, ethical and ideological issues surrounding DRM are by no means clear. In this feature we explore the ins and outs of DRM as they stand today.

What’s wrong with DRM?

If DRM was always completely transparent to the end user, was not intrusive, protected copyright in a fashion that all agreed was fair and did not add cost to media hardware, perhaps no-one would find it objectionable. Various media companies have already applied almost draconian measures A further problem with DRM is that of interoperability, that agreeing on and using a standard form of DRM is not always in the media companies interest.

For example, this is true of Apple iTunes because of Apple’s agreements with the content providers that iTunes downloads should not be easy to copy. Some music download sites use license validation servers which validate a users right to play tracks they have downloaded. There have been several recent examples of music download sites closing down with the result that many users are left with tracks they have paid for but can no longer play because the validation servers are no longer available.

DRM has a negative effect on open source development, particularly on projects that are dedicated to pure open source, because all DRM involves proprietary methods and code. At present, playing protected Blu-ray content on a Linux box requires use of a device or player key, none of which have been issued for open source software players.