Digital Rights Management (DRM): Access Control Tech Defined

Digital rights management, or DRM, involves access control technologies that serve to control the use of copyrighted digital media. This is done to protect the authors and publishers from unauthorised use of their material.

DRM manages what a user can and cannot do with hardware or media they have purchased. For example, DRM can restrict the type of access you have to a particular product, not allow it to be copied or distributed, only allow access from a certain device or devices, and quantify how many views a user can have.

DRM is intended to protect copyrighted material and keep content from being pirated or viruses from being proliferated.

Critics of DRM report that this type of strict access control can impede legitimate use of digital products as well as stifle competition and innovation. However, digital rights management is protected by laws against its circumvention.

DRM can help to secure files, protect the intellectual property of a publisher or author and therefore their income stream, and help authors retain ownership of the digital media that they worked hard to create.

What is digital rights management?

Digital right management (DRM) is a set of tools that use access control technologies to prevent unauthorised use of digital products. DRM protects digital media and assets, limiting the way that copyrighted hardware and software are used after purchase.

With so much information and knowledge being shared online and digitally, digital piracy has been a thorn in the side of authors and publishers. They spend a lot of time and money to create digital products only to have them “stolen” and passed around on peer-to-peer file exchange services by users who have not paid for the product.

DRM technology seeks to control how hardware or software is used, limiting the type of use, copying, distribution, number of views, or modification to the digital media. DRM can make it difficult to steal or share content without consent from the author or publisher.

Understanding how digital rights management works

DRM often uses encryption technology that can ensure that only legitimate users with the decryption key can access the content. The manner in which the content is viewed and how it is used can also be managed or restricted through DRM tools. DRM often includes code written into the digital media limiting the number of views or prohibiting copying the product.

Technologies such as product keys or persistent online authentication ensure that only legitimate users have access to DRM-protected content. Anti-tampering and copying restrictions can further keep digital media from being altered or redistributed.

DRM tools can also restrict content to specific regional areas, like not allowing U.S.-based software to be run or used abroad.

DRM can protect products, software, and content in the following ways:

• Restricts content from being downloaded, saved, copied, or edited
• Keeps users from forwarding or sharing content or products
• Disallows the ability to take screen grabs or screenshots of the content
• Disallows content to be printed or limits the number of times it can be printed
• Limits the number of uses or times digital media can be accessed or sets an expiration date
• Uses watermarks to establish ownership of documents, files, or artwork
• Restricts access to specific devices, locations, or IP addresses

Basically, with DRM, you do not own the product or software you have purchased. You simply have purchased the right to access it in the way and manner the company has authorised through licensing agreements.

Digital rights management laws

In 1996, a special agreement under the Berne Convention was made to help protect digital media and works called the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Copyright Treaty (WCT). This treaty is designed to copyright-protect computer programs and databases. This was meant to encourage member states and nations to enact laws preventing DRM circumvention.

In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law in 1998. This law makes it illegal to bypass DRM technologies. In the European Union, the Information Society Directive was first implemented in 2001.

Several other countries have similar laws and restrictions in place to prevent people from attempting to get around DRM tech and penalise those who do.

Examples of digital rights management in use

DRM has a wide range of uses. It is most commonly applied to creative products, including music, video, and electronic books. These are comm