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.

History

Legal Background

The copyright since its formal creation in 1710 by the British Statute of Anne and its inclusion in the U.S. Constitution has been the main protection scheme for intellectual property rights for creative information goods and services.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

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 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, and thus lifted the physical constraints of copying. The rise of digital media and networks made sharing and copying not only easier for traditional information "pirates", but also made it easier for individuals. Unlike the "pirates" whose unauthorized copies were for commercial gain, individual copying stems from behavioral norms from traditions of fair use and first-sale rights.

The rise of unlicensed and illegal copying and distribution of intellectual property cast doubts on whether a copyright provided enough protection in the wake of continued digital innovations. Copyright owners responded by developing technological copyright protection mechanisms (CPM) in order to make copying more costly and difficult. For CPM to succeed, legal enforcement was needed to ensure the uniform adoption of technologies and that any attempt to circumvent them would be criminalized. The U.S. 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provided for enforcement of copyright protection mechanisms. The development of schemes that were capable of not only preventing or limiting copying, but also controlling the distribution and uses of digital media eventually became collectively known as digital rights management.

Music: The First to be hit

Initially, writing and written works were the primary focus of this legislation: technology, or lack of it, protected other art forms, such as film and music, from being easily copied or distributed in a way that required heavy enforcement.

The Conditions

However, as technology improved exponentially in the past half century, the copying of these art forms became more and more an issue. Eventually, a tipping point was reached, and music was the form of media that was hit head on with the problem of copying becoming so easy, that copyright violation became an unenforceable law. Although there are many theories as to why music was the first hit, several factors are credited:

• Digitized Format: The digital Compact Disc format, first published in 1988 by Philips and Sony, was the primary medium for music storage and sale by the early 1990's. Because music already was primarily stored on a digital medium, it made it easy to make digital copies with minimal effort and a home computer. This is in contrast to a book, which was more widely sold on a physical, non digital medium, and would take more then a computer and quite a bit of effort to fully copy digitally.

• The format of Albums: For decades the common format of music sale has been the Album, a collection of music tracks typically related in some way and produced by the same artist. A album typically has between 10 and 20 tracks on it, and each track is typically 3 to 5 minutes long. Although the album itself is considered extremely important to the format of music, each track is easily enjoyed by most of the general public outside the context of the album as a whole. Therefore, sharing a single track off an album is extremely common, and a single track is small and easy to share. A album's segmentation therefore makes sharing it easier. This is in contrast to a film, where no such segmentation exists. Most people get very little utility out of just part of a film, rather than the film as a whole.

• The consumer base: Although people of all ages enjoy music, most music is marketed (and sold) to adolescents and people in their 20's. As it so happens, these young people are the people most adapt to new technology, and the quickest to adapt it to save them money and time.

• Previously Unenforced Conditions: Copying music via tapes was technically illegal before, but rarely enforced. As a result, the average consumer did not perceive copying music to be illegal.

• The MP3 format: The MPEG Audio Layer 3 format, released in the early 1990's, is considered one of the leading reasons as to why music was so quickly hit with the copyright problems leading to DRM. As the Cotton Gin is often blamed for the boom in the institution of slavery, so is the miracle of the MP3 format often blamed for blindsiding the music industry. Music and sound formats, such as Microsoft's WAVE format, were available long before the MP3 format. However, the compression of a high quality music track into a media file with an average length of 4 megabytes, allowed for the ease of transmission needed for widespread copying.

• Wide Internet Adoption: The exponential adoption of internet access into the average American household in the early 1990's allowed for a common, free, and quickly growing medium to transmit songs across. Without the internet, music would only be able to be shared as far as you could walk it.

• Limited Record Company Adoption: With previous improved formats, such as cassette tapes and CD's, the music industry has been fast to adapt, develop, and switch to these new forms of media to satisfy the demand. However for digital music this was not the case. Although computers with CD burners and MP3 player sales were skyrocketing in the early 90's, from 1999 (the release of Napster) to 2003 (the opening of the Itunes Store), there was no digital music service offering any of the music produced by the big 4 record companies (Warner, Sony BMG, EMI, Universal). As a result, the lack of service drove people to acquire their music via illegal copying.

The Reaction

As a result of these conditions, starting with the release of the Napster sharing service in 1999, the music industry began to react to the growing amount of file sharing that was occurring via various services. The music industry, through the RIAA, decided on three primary avenues of advance to thwart this growing problem:

• Shut down the services: Napster was the first to be sued by the RIAA, and shut down (as a free service) in July 2001. Subsequent services, such as Kazaa have been sued but have reacted by moving offshore, outside the jurisdiction of the RIAA.

• Offer services to consumers: The record companies began to give licenses to digital distributers, allowing them to sell their music. Under almost every circumstance, some sort of DRM clause was in the contract initially. In recent months however, record companies have begun to bow to demand and allow DRM free services to start.

• Make Examples of People Sharing: In order to drive up the perceived "cost" of sharing music illegally, the RIAA began to sue people who were sharing large libraries of music online. Although most of these cases were settled out of court, the settlements stretched into tens of thousands of dollars and cost much more due to legal fees.

Consumer Backlash to the RIAA and the result

In purely economic terms, the record companies were playing by the book: Lower the cost of purchasing a track online, raise the cost of sharing or downloading one, and eventually your consumer base will switch to the cheaper option.

However, the RIAA failed to consider the nightmare they could produce by suing their consumers, many of whom were children. As a result, there was a backlash towards the RIAA and big music in general, and although sales of digital music rose quickly, the PR of the music industry took a heavy hit.

Additionally, the introduction of DRM to a product that consumers used to purchase without strings, drove off many people who used to purchase music regularly.

Recovery: The movement away from DRM

Responding to consumer demand, and in many ways the practicality of the changing industry and consumer base, recently a host of music services have begun selling music that is DRM free. Although the record companies are slow to accept this reality, it is beginning to become an industry trend.

Film: Learning from Music's Mistakes

Trying to not make the same mistakes as their music counterparts, the film and TV industry is attempting to be faster in the adaptation of digital distribution.

Forms of DRM were introduced in both the DVD and Blu-Ray formats. The DVD format was cracked a decade ago, and there are rumors that Blu-Ray has already been broken.

However, the industry as a whole is beginning to accept the idea that fewer and fewer consumers are accessing their content via physical media, and more and more are switching to digital or streaming services.

Rather then fighting the tide of digitization as the music industry did, the film and TV industry is trying to move faster to offer reasonable services to consumers that match the demand:

• In order to have immediate access to shows and movies, most cable services are now offering On-Demand services via digital cable. These services differ from traditional pay-per-view services in that they typically have a much wider selection, and often have a wide selection of free films and TV shows that come with the package.

• In order to counter services such as DailyMotion and YouTube, distribution networks are beginning to offer TV shows and Movies streaming online with commercials and / or banner advertisements. Such services include
  • ABC.com
  • Hulu
  • SouthParkStudios.com

DRM Approaches

Encryption

Early DRM relied on security and encryption to combat illegal copying by using a content encoding system and then limiting access to the decoding technology. All control over future use was lost once the content was decoded, and any further protection against illegal copying still relied on copyright law.

An example is the DVD Forum's Content Scrambling System (CSS) which provided a common means of encoding for all movies on DVD. Any firm producing players or software to view the encoded movies had to license the decoding system from the forum. Despite industry claims, this scheme was never designed to prevent copying — a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD would play on any player that the original would. What it did attempt was to control usage of the DVDs. CSS includes a system of region codes such that, for example, a DVD sold in North America (region 1) will not play on a player sold in Europe (region 2). The CSS scheme is easily bypassed using the open source decoder known as DeCSS.

Marking

This DRM approach entails the encoding of markers into the digital content that can be used for description, identification, protection, monitoring, tracking, and limiting uses of intellectual property. Combining this approach with the technology to read the markers and abide by the markers allows for even greater control over management of digital content than just limiting the ability to copy as in the encryption approach.

Examples of the marking approach to DRM can be found in downloaded music from content providers such as Apple, Microsoft, RealNetworks, and Sony. A future example is the broadcast flag system which is being proposed for U.S. digital television which would allow cable networks to limit the copying or distribution of their programming.

Rights Locker

The "rights locker" approach drastically changes the way in which digital content can be owned. Instead of owning copies of the digital media, the consumer owns a set of rights to access the content from a central digital network using a specified range of devices. Examples of this approach include On-demand TV content and Netflix's watch instantly service where users are allowed temporary local copies while viewing the programming.

Difficulties of DRM

Consumer attitudes

Many people find DRM systems to be a hindrance to the use of the media they have purchased, and some consumers actively boycott companies and products that use DRM. Many consumers express a preference for material that is not 'hindered' with DRM protections. DRM also seems to be doing very little to stop unauthorized copyright infringement: "today, infringement is more widespread than ever".

Access and Usage Concerns

Consumers have many concerns in regards to access and usage of various content due to DRM systems/restrictions. Consumer opinions are to keep the rights of the consumer from the analogue realm to be the same in the digital realm. Some rights that users are concerned about losing are their abilities to create private backup copies, excerpt, transition data from one device to another, record for future use, and editing content for personal use.

More explicitly, consumers worry about the loss of data because of restrictions on transferring from one format to another. This may force consumer into repurchasing digital data in another format, when they can easily have the capability of transitioning the format themselves. Another outside concern consumers ask is how do DRM Systems handle the expiration of copyright terms. Do DRM systems release their restrictions when the copyright term expires?

Privacy Concerns

The main user concern in regards to privacy is the ability for the DRM systems to record and transmit consumer usage of particular products and digital data. This becomes a double edged sword. Some users enjoy this feature; for instance, recommended music/videos/books appeals to some users when trying to find something new to experience. Other users complain about this claiming they are being targeted more easily by data/media providers. There are also concerns in passing privateinformation over the internet such as credit card information to make purchases. These are difficult concerns to balance for DRM systems.

Consumers recommend the following: DRM Systems should store "no more data than necessary" and store data for "no longer than necessary". These systems should also be complex enough to inform consumers of all data that is shared about them. Consumers should have the opportunity to regulate how much the DRM system can/can't report or share.

Interoperability Concerns

Interoperability is a difficult concern to deal with because it tries to balance users being able to use their media on many machines/programs without any problems, but the industry must also worry about how to protect against the distribution to unauthorized users. Some recommendations are to allow for portability and compatibility with multiple devices, an open standard for the various devices, and no platform restrictions for consumers. Consumers should not have to re-purchase media for use on another device.

Security Concerns

There is a concern that some DRM systems will require an internet connection and opening up vulnerabilities to the consumers' computers or limit the ability of current software on their computers. This concern falls mostly with "trusted computing" which in order to work, according to consumers, "trusted computing" providers must be a certified provider and must allow the consumer to set the level of security.

Business Concerns

Consumers do not like where some of the business concepts are going such as all post purchase control, inability to share across multiple devices used by the consumer, usage tracking, and file expiration. Some other concerns are the advantages bigger companies have over smaller/medium sized companies in regards to DRM licensing costs, the price control of online products versus conventional counterparts, and technology advances that will be held back by embedded players/devices.

Legal problems

There is a basic principle of copyright law, called "fair use" in US law. For example, copyright does not prevent quoting a work in a review or analysis; nor does is prohibit a blind user from using software that will read an e-book aloud for him. However, some DRM systems block those.

The principle is clear, but the border is by no means sharply 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 and sometimes altered by new legislation, but will likely never go away entirely.

That principle greatly complicates the design of DRM systems. Copyright law has exceptions for fair use; can you build those into DRM software? What do you do about the grey areas? If you ignore fair use, or just misjudge some grey areas, you will infringe on the users' legal rights; what are the market or legal consequences of that? How will your DRM system adapt to changes in the law?

One case that was fought all the way to the US Supreme Court may be relevant to DRM. The court ruled that recording TV programs for home use did not violate copyright, so Sony could not be held to be contributing to copyright infringement by selling VCRs. That decision appears to mean that, for example, it is legal for users to copy songs from their CDs into a music archive on their hard drives. In another case,the court ruled that the Rio, "a portable digital audio device which allows a user to download MP3 audio files from a computer and to listen to them elsewhere.", is also legal fair use.

However, if the DRM allows those applications, how can it prevent the users from sharing the files? If it does not allow such things, can users legally break the DRM to enforce their rights? Will they just avoid your DRM-protected products?

Technical problems

DRM is attempting a fundamentally difficult task. Security author Bruce Schneier states of DRM: "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, commenting on Microsoft DRM efforts, wrote "The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history".

Why is this so difficult? Assume you are a totally legal user of the material protected by DRM, and all the security tests for your music, or your software, are successful. To hear the music, it has to be put into a form the speakers will reproduce. At some point between the DRM-protected recording and the speaker, the signal has to be put into a useful form. Once it is in that form, how does the DRM enforcer prevent it from being copied?

One of the great problems with encryption is hiding decrypted content. In order to hide it from user applications, DRM-enabled players decrypt content in kernel mode and check for unsigned drivers. Some DRM developers suggest using TPM chip to insure that operation system is genuine and only signed drivers can be loaded. In such systems DRM drivers can control computer completely and perfectly hide the decryption process.

The problem of protecting material on a DVD or other physical storage device are simple when compared to delivering content across the Internet. Think of pay-per-view television. Even in encrypted form, it has to pass through intermediate distribution points on the Internet; the general distribution problem here is part of inter-domain multicast routing (IDMR). How do the legal users get the decryption key for the program for which they have paid, and only for that program? Can anyone along the path from content user to content buyer intercept that key and use it? If so, will the legitimate user still be able to use it? Alternatively, can the stolen key be distributed?

DRM Implementations

Several music sellers and distributors over the years have tried a number of DRM implementations:

Apple iTunes

Apple was the first company to capitalize on the digital music market by being the first acquire music selling licenses from the big 4 record companies. Apple's Music Service, iTunes Store, has infamously used DRM since it's inception. Although their DRM is easily cracked, recently iTunes has introduced a new iTunes Plus service which offers DRM-free music, and Apple is toying with the idea of removing DRM from it's services altogether.

Rhapsody

Rhapsody, the digital music service started by RealNetworks, is one of the most popular online music services with 2.25 million paid subscribers. Rhapsody offers streaming music and DRM music downloads for a monthly subscription fee

Napster 2.0

Napster 2.0 or the Napster Pay Service, is a DRM-enabled (specically Microsoft's Playsforsure-protected) music licensing service offering unlimited licensed MP3's for a monthly fee. As of April 2007, Napster 2.0 is reported to have 830,000 subscribers. Napster also has a DRM free version of it's music store, which was opened in mid-2008

imeem

imeem is a streaming music social network. Until recently, imeem only offered music via DRM, but has recently removed DRM from it's services, reflecting an industry trend