Digital Rights Management
As the convention is, let me define Digital Rights Management. DRM is an application that attempts to control what buyers can and can’t do with digital media/hardware that they purchase. Simply speaking, it is nothing but conveying the following message to the buyer: ‘Hey you bought it, but you can’t share it’.
You might wonder how DRM is relevant to you. Let’s see…
Buying a DVD and not being able to copy the contents to your PC and buying a game from the iTunes store and not being able to copy it on multiple phones – these are instances of DRM.
The use of DRM is controversial. The Free Software Foundation explains the use of Digital Restriction Management. Absolute implementation of DRM would mean paying for a lot of things that we use free of cost today. In other words, you might have to pay to listen to your favourite MP3 which you can now copy from your friend’s PC or you might have to pay to access a particular episode of your favorite soap on YouTube (which you can do free of cost now) if absolute implementation of DRM is achieved.
The controversy lies in the fact that some people are ready to pay while others have the ‘why pay?’ attitude and are of the view that no one has the right to exercise control on creative concepts like music and entertainment. The copyright ‘owners’ of digital data have their own thought process. There’s a cost involved in attaining the copyright, media generation, editing and packaging the data into simple digital files before they reach you. There’s also the question of artistic integrity. Of course, 99 cents for a track is nothing. But compounded and continued revenue is what fuels the industry. DRM is important for sustenance of quality digital products in the market.
Some relevant facts:
- According to Business Software Alliance, losses incurred by software vendors as a result of piracy amounted to $53 billion in 2008
- PC software piracy rates in India and China alone is as high as 41%
- A study by the International Chamber of Commerce’s BASCAP in 2010 estimates an alarming rise in piracy-driven job loss in Europe’s creative industries from 185,000 in 2008 to 1.2 million by 2015. While these figures and similar other figures have been under constant debate, there is no denying that the impact of piracy has been substantial on the industry
As I stated in the beginning, DRM only ‘attempts’ to control the situation as digital pirates are working round the clock to break these protection algorithms of DRM. Over a period of time, some people would be able to break any algorithm and every time the digital pirates break it, the copyright owners develop yet another challenge for the digital pirates and this continues like a game.
From ‘ripping’ and ‘time-shifting’ to ‘analog holes’ and what you think can be a solution, we shall discuss the challenges faced by DRM in further posts. We can also trace the growth of DRM from simple password-protected files to complex hash encrypted dongles. Do let me know what you’d like to read and discuss.
So, sit tight. The ride has just begun!
Do you see a possibility of more and more media companies looking at DRM as a hosted service?
Surya, this is going to be the trend in the future because every single company wants to protect its rights and will try to generate as much revenue.
So, there is no point that this is going to stop in the near future. In fact, it will grow with the passage of time, you will find it difficult to download pirated movies or music.
Abhinandan, Good information on DRM. As we all are aware that most of the publishing companies have started thier digital journey, Almost all content in next 5 years will be served in the digital format. Whether these companies are prepared for this switch, do they have the right management systems in place? There are many questions which are unanswered. This in my opinion is a great idea and as a company we should invest right away to see how we can bring down losses and increase our customer revenues.
@Surya: Most of the current DRM solutions are tightly ingerated with the products they protect, making them costlier.
While a hosted solution for DRM would be cost effective due to reusability of the existing paltform; it would also come with the apprehension of a possibility of exposure of the algorithms being used by one company to a competitor.
If a concious step is taken by leaders in IT to showcase that such a scenario would not happen, indeed it will pull in more and more companies towards hosted solutions.
Hi Abhinandan,
I am curious to know how DRM will stop piracy in music world, as it is rampant and it causes a great loss to music industry.
Can you please put some light on how exactly it works?
It’s really good information. But I want to know the future of DRM. Does it keeps the check on piracy and the things we usually download from torrent etc and through other means?
Good Information. Good to start with to know more about DRM and hope to see more good interesting concepts related to this topic in Future.
But do you really think that absolute implementation of DRM will ever be achieved as you also mentioned that everyone is not ready to pay the price, so if there is a growth in DRM implementation area in parallel the ways to break them will also grow and this will continues.
So I am really curious to know and see in near future that how the Absolute implementation of DRM will be achieved.
You have provided some real good information on DRM. I wanted to share my thoughts on the same.
Over the last few years a lot of content has started migrating towards becoming digitized in a way which enables easier piracy. eg Online music downloads are catching up fast. By 2010 it is expected that digital downloads would cross CD sales.The most cogent solution that comes to mind is to ensure legal downloads is to bring prices down to a point at which a person would feel that the benefits of purchasing an original piece of software / music (for example) far outweighs the ease of downloading it illegally.
Apple I tunes store, for example does not allow purchases to be made via a Debit Card – thus alienating all those prospective customers who are ready to buy stuff online but do not possess a Credit Card.
There also needs to be a more proactive way of educating customers about the benefits of legal purchases versus doing so illegally.
The pride a customer gets from purchasing something legally makes sense only if things become easier for him. Unfortunately there have been umpteen cases wherein due to crudely implemented DRM measures the use of the content has been hampered. Case in example: Ubisoft launched a game “Silent Hunter” which would work only with an active internet connection. So if you are playing on a laptop or on a desktop with an erratic internet connection – your game will not run. This is the sort of DRM implementation which deters people from opting for the legal – purchase channel.
We should start understanding that there is a vast section of people who download illegal / pirated stuff not because they are attempting to save a few bucks or feel the pride of fooling the law but because the legal route does not offer any motivation – rather has its fair share of deterrents.The perplexing question though is not whether DRM can be successfully implemented or not – the question is whether it is a good idea to do so.
It is really a good topic to share our thoughts. It has become a ideological battle in an industry today which will define trends and horizon for the commerce enabled digital media. The Keys to Digital Media are rapidly becoming a topic of concern for top notches in industry like Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
Let me put forward some thoughts on DRM:
• No matter how sophisticated the implementation is, it will be cracked somehow.
• To state some examples-
– CSS, the protection mechanism for DVDs was cracked fairly quickly.
– Apple’s FairPlay was cracked and can be easily bypassed using JHymm which decrypts your iTunes protected AAC files. It is available as a free download.
• People who want to pirate music, movies and other media will always find a way to do so.
In my view, DRM can be efficacious if used to facilitate a viable business model which would definately pay for the losses, as long as it does not violate existing liberties. Consumers who want to contribute to the online media economy should be treated with respect and be presented with the offerings which are fair and easy to accept. The term legal in DRM should be re-defined so that legal means “cannot fully protect the current business models”. Following the way digital entertainment may become the next revenue booster, if only the suppliers of this content can avoid making such systems too inconvenient for their customers.
Additionally, the industries must enthusiastically approach a distribution model that takes advantage of customers favored ways of obtaining and enjoying digital entertainment. So in short content providers should explore alternative distribution models.
When reading news articles, technical magazines and looking at the statistics provided by you, sometimes we get the impression that internet/online piracy is about to ruin the industries providing digital material, in particular the record, movie and software industries. Although the Record labels have as much media coverage as they have always had, movie budgets frequently reach new peaks (Even Bollywood movies) and software producers have some of the most well known brand names in the world and they continue to grow. Disparity between the impression from the successful businesses of these industries and the elegy they tend to portrait in the media, it would be interesting to investigate further in an attempt to reflect reality. Could you please share your thoughts on the same?