Digital rights management

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Digital Rights Management (DRM) refers to the laws and technologies which provide intellectual property owners control over the distribution and use of their digital property by defining consumers' rights in its usage. DRM's primary function is to restore control over copying digital media and to restrict access and content use beyond what is granted by copyright law.

Legal Background

The copyright since its formal creation in 1710 by the British Statute of Anne and its inclusion in the first article of the U.S. Constitution has been the main protection scheme for intellectual property rights for creative information goods and services. Copyright law grants exclusive legal ownership of information under specific conditions and terms. Through two major revisions of U.S. copyright law in 1909 and 1976 the range of content and media forms covered by legislation were expanded.

During the pre-digital era, large-scale copying was both expensive and usually resulted in degraded content. The development of electronic and digital media transformed the production and distribution of information goods and services. In digital form, the content could be copied perfectly or easily converted to another form or format.

Difficulties of DRM

Legal problems

There is a basic principle of copyright law, called "fair use" in US law. Copyright does not prevent quoting a work in a review or anaylsis, creating a parody of it, and so on. The principle is clear, but border is by no means clearly delineated. Between the black of copyright infringement and the white of perfectly legal fair use, there is a large grey area. This is being narrowed down by various court rulings, but will likely never go away entirely.

Technical problems

DRM is attempting a fundamentally difficult task. As Schneier writes, "trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet."

In particular cases, the costs may be quite high. Peter Gutmann writes "The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history".