The Idea Of Digital Rights Management

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction:

Time was when if people wanted to listen to music, they paid money and bought vinyl records or the more recent CD. To watch a movie, they waited to rent VHS or DVDs or went to the theatre. To read a book, they either purchased it from the bookstore or borrowed it from the local library.

The issue of piracy in case of music began with the sale of blank cassettes, but it intensified after the arrival of CDs and when sound went digital. Several software products allowed people to copy music and movies from the CDs and DVDs and onto their personal computers. The arrival of the internet and Peer-2-Peer (P2P) file sharing sites allowed people to replicate and share music, movies and files with countless number of people worldwide, giving them the ability to download movies, songs, albums and even entire discographies and videographies, thus changing the value of the industry rapidly.

While such audio and video piracy is quite rampant, the issue of e-book piracy is also steadily increasing.

Preventing such blatant piracy eventually comes down to the use of copyrights. In such an age of digital revolution, where copies of music, movies and even books are available digitally, the masses use the digital content in such new and ingenious ways that makes it nearly an insurmountable feat for the copyrighter holders to maintain control over the distribution of their property.

Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is a comprehensive which refers to a collection of systems used to protect the copyrights of digital media, as well as data that is stored or transferred digitally.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is critical to publishers of electronic media as it helps assure them that they will receive the appropriate income. Using digital watermarks and proprietary encryption on the distributed media, DRM assists publishers in preventing illegal distribution of their works. What DRM basically does is, it ensures that the digital content is used exclusively by the user who paid for it.

Framework

The idea of Digital Rights Management, beyond copyrights protection, was introduced in the late 1980’s. In the latter half of 1990’s, IBM implemented this idea into some of its technologies, namely Cryptolope and the InterTrust Digibox. Following their example, several technologies were created with this idea in mind but enjoyed limited commercial success. The reasons for failure of Cryptolope and similar technologies was that it formal DRM standards and an early introduction into a market that wasn’t ready to accept DRM.

The aim of such early technologies was content protection and as such concentrated on client side security and is now called Digital Rights Enforcement (DRE). First generation DRM systems failed as they did not meet certain customer requirements and also crumbled while trying to achieve everything. Modern DRM systems have evolved from such early forms of these technologies. Even though the first generation of DRM failed, it was successful in the development of several rights enforcement technologies such as secure containers, digital watermarks, encryption, digital certificates and entrusted computing platforms to name a few. These technologies played an essential part in building a layered framework for the second generation DRM architecture.

This structure would likely form an hourglass structure where handling and interpreting rights expression would be its core essence. In such a layered architecture, the top layers would provide services, middle layers would deal with handling and interpretation of rights expressions and the lower layers would assure the application of such rights.

The ideal DRM system is flexible, entirely transparent to the user and pretty complex stuff for a computer program to crack. First-generation DRM software sought merely to control copying. Second-generation DRM schemes, on the other hand, seek to control viewing, copying, printing, altering and everything else you can possibly do with digital content.

A digital rights management scheme operates on three levels:

Establishing a copyright for a piece of content,

Managing the distribution of that copyrighted content and

Controlling what a consumer can do with that content once it has been distributed.

To accomplish this level of control, a DRM program has to effectively define and describe three entities -- the user, the content and the usage rights - and the relationship between them.

How DRM works?

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a term that refers to schemes that restricts access to copyrighted material in the digital world. But what it essentially does is, it takes the control away from the user who owns the digital file and hands it over to a computer program. DRM always has some form of a digital lock on the file. These locks are called "Licensed Encryption Keys" which prevents unauthorized access to the digital files. When a user purchases the digital file, he is given the unlock code for these encryption keys which enables them to use the file for themselves but also restricting them from copying or sharing the files with other users.

A few examples are:

- Studio including software in its DVD cds that prevents users from making copies of the cd.

- "Special" music cds sold by companies which when played by the user installs hidden files in the user’s computer , thus slowing the applications and programs besides being difficult to uninstall.

- Ebook server restricting access to copying or downloading of the document according to the restrictions set by the author.

Use of Technology:

Future of Technology: