Introduction

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a term, used for technologies that control the access and usage of digital data (such as software, movies and music). Before DRM, copyright holders have had the exclusive rights to make a copy as well as to distribute their works. But, they had no control over the way their works had been used. DRM made it possible to control or restrict the use of digital media content on electronic devices with the help of some technologies.

Copyright holders are viewing DRM as a necessary tool to prevent the duplication of their works. At the same time, some critics such as Electronic Frontier Foundation and Free Software Foundation are terming it anti-competitive referring iTunes as an example. In addition, Free Software Foundation suggests that the use of word ‘Rights’ is misleading and advocates using the term ‘Digital Restrictions Management’.

DRM may be enforced by several means such as some special modifications to digital media software. But these executions are not effective enough as the part of inherent design as they can easily be reverse engineered. This shortcoming led to a move toward Mandatory Access Control systems wherein user restrictions are imposed by burying software in hardware, working with software provender in Operating System, media playing software, or both.

Features and Benefits of DRM

A quality DRM software,

-> Supports user and group level access control for better digital asset management.
-> Limits content availability to specific time windows.
-> Controls access to any file type including audio, video, software, document, zip archive etc.
-> Obscure files on user’s desktop.
-> Restrict using, printing, copying and distributing the content.

Who is using DRM?

DRM today is being used by entertainment industry (films, television and recording), music online stores such as Apple’s iTunes store and e-Book producers to control access to their content.

Refrences

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management

2. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june01/iannella/06iannella.html

3. http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_11/may/