Introduction
DRM technologies attempt to give control to the seller of digital content or devices after it has been given to a consumer. For digital content this means preventing the consumer access, denying the user the ability to copy the content or converting it to other formats. For devices this means restricting the consumers on what hardware can be used with the device or what software can be run on it. Long before the arrival of digital or even electronic media, copyright holders, content producers, or other financially or artistically interested parties had business and legal objections to copying technologies. Examples include: player piano rolls early in the 20th century, audio tape recording, and video tape recording (e.g., the "Betamax case" in the U.S.). Copying technology thus exemplifies a disruptive technology.
The advent of digital media and analog/digital conversion technologies, especially those that are usable on mass-market general-purpose personal computers, has vastly increased the concerns of copyright-dependent individuals and organizations, especially within the music and movie industries, because these individuals and organizations are partly or wholly dependent on the revenue generated from such works. While analog media inevitably loses quality with each copy generation, and in some cases even during normal use, digital media files may be duplicated an unlimited number of times with no degradation in the quality of subsequent copies. The advent of personal computers as household appliances has made it convenient for consumers to convert media (which may or may not be copyrighted) originally in a physical/analog form or a broadcast form into a universal, digital form (this process is called ripping) for location- or timeshifting. This, combined with the Internet and popular file sharing tools, has made unauthorized distribution of copies of copyrighted digital media (digital piracy) much easier.
DRM technologies enable content publishers to enforce their own access policies on content, like restrictions on copying or viewing. In cases where copying or some other use of the content is prohibited, regardless of whether or not such copying or other use is legally considered a “fair use”, DRM technologies have come under fire. DRM is in common use by the entertainment industry (e.g., audio and video publishers). Many online music stores, such as Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store, as well as many e-book publishers also use DRM, as do cable and satellite service operators to prevent unauthorized use of content or services. However, Apple quietly dropped DRM from most iTunes music files in about 2009.
Read more about this topic: Digital Rights Management
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