Digital rights management (DRM) is a term for access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright
holders and individuals to limit the use of digital content and
devices. The term is used to describe any technology that inhibits uses
of digital content that is not desired or intended by the content
provider. The term does not generally refer to other forms of copy protection, which can be circumvented without modifying the file or device, such as serial numbers or keyfiles. It can also refer to restrictions associated with specific instances of digital works or devices. Companies such as Sony, Amazon, Apple Inc., Microsoft, AOL and the BBC use the power of digital rights management. In 1998 the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed in the United States to impose criminal penalties on those who circumvent encryption.^[1]

The use of digital rights management is controversial. Corporations
claim that DRM is necessary to fight copyright infringement online and
keep users safe from computer viruses. DRM can help the copyright holder
maintain artistic integrity^[2] or ensure continued revenue streams.^[3]
Those opposed to DRM argue that there is no evidence that DRM helps
prevent copyright infringement or computer viruses and that DRM helps
big business stifle innovation and competition.^[4] Proponents argue that digital locks
should be considered necessary to prevent intellectual property from
being stolen, just as physical locks are needed to prevent personal
property from being stolen.^[5]
Digital locks placed in accordance with DRM policies can also restrict
users from doing something perfectly legal, such as making backup copies
of CDs or DVDs, lending materials out through a library, accessing
works in a public domain, or using copyrighted materials for research
and education under fair use laws.^[5] Some opponents, such as the Free Software Foundation (through its Defective By Design campaign), maintain that the use of the word “rights” is misleading and suggest that people instead use the term digital restrictions management.^[6]
Their position is essentially that copyright holders are restricting
the use of material in ways that are beyond the scope of existing
copyright laws, and should not be covered by future laws.^[7] The Electronic Frontier Foundation, and other opponents, also consider the use of DRM systems to be anti-competitive practice.^[8] This position holds that the user needs legal protection.^[9]

Contents [hide] 1 Introduction 1.1 Common DRM techniques 2 Technologies 2.1 DRM and film 2.2 DRM and television 2.3 DRM and music 2.3.1 Audio CDs 2.3.2 Internet music 2.4 Computer games 2.5 E-books 2.6 DRM and documents 2.7 Watermarks 2.8 Metadata 3 Laws regarding DRM 3.1 Digital Millennium Copyright Act 3.2 International issues 4 Controversy 4.1 DRM opposition 4.2 “DRM-Free” 4.3 Impossible task 5 Shortcomings 5.1 Methods to bypass DRM 5.2 Analog hole 5.3 DRM on general computing platforms 5.4 DRM on purpose-built hardware 5.5 Watermarks 5.6 Mass piracy failure 5.7 Obsolescence 5.8 Moral and Legitimacy Implications 5.9 Not all piracy is undesirable to digital rights holders 6 Business Model Ideas 6.1 Easy and Cheap 6.2 Digital Content to Promote Traditional Product 6.3 Disintermediation and Give it Away 6.4 The Artistic Freedom Voucher 7 Historical note 8 See also 8.1 Related concepts 8.2 Lawsuits 8.3 Organizations 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links

[edit] Introduction

DRM technologies attempt to control use of digital media by preventing access, copying or conversion to other formats by end users. 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 have enabled publishers to enforce access policies that not only disallow copyright infringements, but also prevent lawful fair use
of copyrighted works, or even implement use constraints on
non-copyrighted works that they distribute; examples include the
placement of DRM on certain public-domain or open-licensed
e-books, or DRM included in consumer electronic devices that time-shift
(and apply DRM to) both copyrighted and non-copyrighted works.

DRM is most commonly used by the entertainment industry (e.g., film and recording).^[10] Many online music stores, such as Apple Inc.‘s iTunes Store, as well as many e-book publishers have implemented DRM. In recent years, a number of television producers
have implemented DRM on consumer electronic devices to control access
to the freely-broadcast content of their shows, in response to the
rising popularity of time-shifting digital video recorder systems such as TiVo.^[11]

[edit] Common DRM techniques

Digital Rights Management Techniques include:

Restrictive Licensing Agreements: The access to digital materials,
copyright and public domain are controlled. Some restrictive licenses
are imposed on consumers as a condition of entering a website or when
downloading software.^[12]

Encryption, Scrambling of expressive material, and embedding of a
tag: This technology is designed to control access and reproduction of
online information. This includes backup copies for personal use.^[13]

[edit] Technologies

[edit] DRM and film

An early example of a DRM system was the Content Scrambling System (CSS) employed by the DVD Forum on film DVDs since ca. 1996. CSS used a simple encryption algorithm, and required device manufacturers to sign license agreements
that restricted the inclusion of features, such as digital outputs that
could be used to extract high-quality digital copies of the film, in
their players. Thus, the only consumer hardware capable of decoding DVD
films was controlled, albeit indirectly, by the DVD Forum, restricting
the use of DVD media on other systems until the release of DeCSS by Jon Lech Johansen in 1999, which allowed a CSS-encrypted DVD to play properly on a computer using Linux, for which the Alliance had not arranged a licensed version of the CSS playing software.

Microsoft’s Windows Vista contains a DRM system called the Protected Media Path,
which contains the Protected Video Path (PVP). PVP tries to stop
DRM-restricted content from playing while unsigned software is running
in order to prevent the unsigned software from accessing the content.
Additionally, PVP can encrypt information during transmission to the
monitor or the graphics card, which makes it more difficult to make
unauthorized recordings.

Advanced Access Content System (AACS) is a DRM system for HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs developed by the AACS Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA), a consortium that includes Disney, Intel, Microsoft, Matsushita (Panasonic), Warner Brothers, IBM, Toshiba and Sony. In December 2006 a process key was published on the internet by hackers, enabling unrestricted access to AACS-restricted HD DVD content.^[14] After the cracked keys were revoked, further cracked keys were released.^[15]

[edit] DRM and television

The CableCard
standard is used by cable television providers in the United States to
restrict content to services to which the customer has subscribed.

The broadcast flag concept was developed by Fox Broadcasting in 2001 and was supported by the MPAA and the U.S. Federal Communications Commission
(FCC). A ruling in May 2005 by a US Court of Appeals held that the FCC
lacked authority to impose it on the TV industry in the US. It required
that all HDTVs obey a stream specification determining whether or not a
stream can be recorded. This could block instances of fair use, such as time-shifting. It achieved more success elsewhere when it was adopted by the Digital Video Broadcasting Project
(DV, a consortium of about 250 broadcasters, manufactures, network
operators, software developers, and regulatory bodies from about 35
countries involved in attempting to develop new digital TV standards.

An updated variant of the broadcast flag has been developed in the Content Protection and Copy Management (DVB-CPCM).
It was developed in private, and the technical specification was
submitted to European governments in March 2007. As with much DRM, the
CPCM system is intended to control use of copyrighted material by the
end-user, at the direction of the copyright holder. According to Ren
Bucholz of the EFF,
which paid to be a member of the consortium, “You won’t even know ahead
of time whether and how you will be able to record and make use of
particular programs or devices”.^[16]
The DVB supports the system as it will harmonize copyright holders’
control across different technologies and so make things easier for end
users. The normative sections have now all been approved for publication
by the DVB Steering Board, and will be published by ETSI as a formal
European Standard as ETSI TS 102 825-X where X refers to the Part number
of specification. Nobody has yet stepped forward to provide a
Compliance and Robustness regime for the standard (though several are
rumoured to be in development), so it is not presently possible to fully
implement a system, as there is nowhere to obtain the necessary device
certificates.

[edit] DRM and music

[edit] Audio CDs

Discs with digital rights management schemes are not legitimately standards-compliant Compact Discs (CDs) but are rather CD-ROM media. Therefore they all lack the CD logotype found on discs which follow the standard (known as Red Book). Therefore these CDs could not be played on all CD players. Many consumers could also no longer play purchased CDs on their computers. Personal computers running Microsoft Windows would sometimes even crash when attempting to play the CDs.^[17]

In 2005, Sony BMG introduced new DRM technology
which installed DRM software on users’ computers without clearly
notifying the user or requiring confirmation. Among other things, the
installed software included a rootkit,
which created a severe security vulnerability others could exploit.
When the nature of the DRM involved was made public much later, Sony
initially minimized the significance of the vulnerabilities its software
had created, but was eventually compelled to recall millions of CDs,
and released several attempts to patch the surreptitiously included
software to at least remove the rootkit. Several class action lawsuits
were filed, which were ultimately settled by agreements to provide
affected consumers with a cash payout or album downloads free of DRM.^[18]

Sony’s DRM software
actually had only a limited ability to prevent copying, as it affected
only playback on Windows computers, not on other equipment. Even on the
Windows platform, users regularly bypassed the restrictions. And, while
the Sony DRM technology created fundamental vulnerabilities in
customers’ computers, parts of it could be trivially bypassed by holding
down the “shift” key while inserting the CD, or by disabling the autorun
feature. In addition, audio tracks could simply be played and
re-recorded, thus completely bypassing all of the DRM (this is known as
the analog hole). Sony’s first two attempts at releasing a patch which would remove the DRM software from users’ computers failed.

In January 2007, EMI stopped publishing audio CDs with DRM, stating that “the costs of DRM do not measure up to the results.” ^[19] Following EMI, Sony BMG
was the last publisher to abolish DRM completely, and audio CDs
containing DRM are no longer released by the four record labels.^[20]

Nokia corporation uses DRM protection with all the preloaded contents distributed with each Nokia device.

[edit] Internet music

Many online music stores employ DRM to restrict usage of music
purchased and downloaded online. There are many options for consumers
wishing to purchase digital music over the internet:

• Prior to 2009, Apple’s iTunes Store utilized the FairPlay DRM system for music. In May of 2007, EMI tracks became available in iTunes Plus
  format at a higher price point. These tracks were higher quality (256
  kbps) and DRM free. In October of 2007, the cost of iTunes Plus tracks
  was lowered to US$0.99.^[21]
  In April of 2009, all iTunes music became available completely DRM
  free. (Videos sold and rented through iTunes, as well as iOS Apps,
  however, were to continue using Apple’s FairPlay DRM.)

• Napster music store
  offers a subscription-based approach to DRM alongside permanent
  purchases. Users of the subscription service can download and stream an
  unlimited amount of music transcoded to Windows Media Audio (WMA)
  while subscribed to the service. But when the subscription period
  lapses, all of the downloaded music is unplayable until the user renews
  his or her subscription. Napster also charges users who wish to use the
  music on their portable device an additional $5 per month. In addition,
  Napster gives users the option of paying an additional $0.99 per track
  to burn it to CD or for the song to never expire. Music bought through
  Napster can be played on players carrying the Microsoft PlaysForSure logo (which, notably, do not include iPods or even Microsoft’s own Zune). As of June 2009 Napster is giving DRM free MP3 music, which can be played on iPhones and iPods.

• Wal-Mart Music Downloads, another online music download store,
  charges $0.94 per track for all non-sale downloads. All Wal-Mart, Music
  Downloads are able to be played on any Windows PlaysForSure marked
  product. The music does play on the SanDisk‘s Sansa mp3 player, for example, but must be copied to the player’s internal memory. It cannot be played through the player’s microSD card slot, which is a problem that many users of the mp3 player experience.

• Sony operated an online music download service called “Connect” which used Sony’s proprietary OpenMG DRM technology. Music downloaded from this store (usually via Sony’s SonicStage software) was only playable on computers running Microsoft Windows and Sony hardware (including the PSP and some Sony Ericsson phones).

• Kazaa
  is one of a few services offering a subscription-based pricing model.
  However, music downloads from the Kazaa website are DRM-protected, and
  can only be played on computers or portable devices running Windows
  Media Player, and only as long as the customer remains subscribed to
  Kazaa.

The various services are currently not interoperable, though those
that use the same DRM system (for instance the several Windows Media DRM
format stores, including Napster, Kazaa and Yahoo Music) all provide
songs that can be played side-by-side through the same player program.
Almost all stores require client software of some sort to be downloaded,
and some also need plug-ins. Several colleges and universities, such as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
have made arrangements with assorted Internet music suppliers to
provide access (typically DRM-restricted) to music files for their
students, to less than universal popularity, sometimes making payments
from student activity fee funds.^[22]
One of the problems is that the music becomes unplayable after leaving
school unless the student continues to pay individually. Another is that
few of these vendors are compatible with the most common portable music
player, the Apple iPod. The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property
(to HMG in the UK; 141 pages, 40+ specific recommendations) has taken
note of the incompatibilities, and suggests (Recommendations 8—12) that
there be explicit fair dealing exceptions to copyright allowing
libraries to copy and format-shift between DRM schemes, and further
allowing end users to do the same privately. If adopted, some of the
acrimony may decrease.

Although DRM is prevalent for Internet music, some online music stores such as eMusic, Dogmazic, Amazon, and Beatport,
do not use DRM despite encouraging users to avoid sharing music.
Another online retailer, Xiie.net, which sells only unsigned artists,
encourages people to share the music they buy from the site, to increase
exposure for the artists themselves. Major labels have begun releasing
more online music without DRM. Eric Bangeman suggests in Ars Technica
that this is because the record labels are “slowly beginning to realize
that they can’t have DRMed music and complete control over the online
music market at the same time… One way to break the cycle is to sell
music that is playable on any digital audio player. eMusic does exactly
that, and their surprisingly extensive catalog of non-DRMed music has
vaulted it into the number two online music store position behind the
iTunes Store.”^[23] Apple’s Steve Jobs has called on the music industry to eliminate DRM in an open letter titled Thoughts on Music.^[24] Apple’s iTunes store will start to sell DRM-free 256 kbit/s (up from 128 kbit/s) AAC
encoded music from EMI for a premium price (this has since reverted to
the standard price). In March 2007, Musicload.de, one of Europe’s
largest online music retailers, announced their position strongly
against DRM. In an open letter, Musicload stated that three out of every
four calls to their customer support phone service are as a result of
consumer frustration with DRM.^[25]

[edit] Computer games

Computer games sometimes use DRM technologies to limit the number of
systems the game can be installed on by requiring authentication with an
online server. Most games with this restriction allow three or five
installs, although some allow an installation to be ‘recovered’ when the
game is uninstalled. This not only limits users who have more than
three or five computers in their homes (seeing as the rights of the
software developers allow them to limit the number of installations),
but can also prove to be a problem if the user has to unexpectedly
perform certain tasks like upgrading operating systems or reformatting
the computer’s hard drive, tasks which, depending on how the DRM is
implemented, count a game’s subsequent reinstall as a new installation,
making the game potentially unusable after a certain period even if it
is only used on a single computer.

In mid-2008, the publication of Mass Effect
marked the start of a wave of titles primarily making use of SecuROM
and Steam for DRM and requiring authentication via an online server. The
use of DRM scheme in 2008’s Spore
backfired and there were protests, resulting in a considerable number
of users seeking a pirated version instead. This backlash against 3
activation limit was a significant factor in Spore becoming the most pirated game in 2008.^[26][27]

Many mainstream publishers continued to rely on online-based DRM throughout the later half of 2008 and early 2009, including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Atari. Ubisoft broke with the tendency to use online DRM in late 2008 with the release of Prince of Persia as an experiment to “see how truthful people really are” ^[28]
regarding the claim that DRM was inciting people to use pirated copies.
Although Ubisoft has not commented on the results of the ‘experiment’,
the majority of their subsequent titles in 2009 contained no
online-based DRM since the release of Prince of Persia – notable examples being Anno 1404 and James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game making use of the online version of the TAGES copy protection system. An official patch has since been released stripping Anno 1404 of the DRM. Electronic Arts followed suit in June 2009 with The Sims 3,^[29] with subsequent EA and EA Sports titles also being devoid of online DRM.

Ubisoft formally announced a return to on-line authentication on 9
February 2010 through its Uplay on-line gaming platform, starting with Silent Hunter 5, The Settlers 7 and Assassin’s Creed 2.^[30] Silent Hunter V was first reported to have been compromised within 24 hours of release,^[31] but users of the cracked version soon found out that only early parts of the game were playable.^[32]
The Uplay system works by having the installed game on the local PCs
incomplete and then continuously downloading parts of the game-code from
Ubisoft’s servers as the game progresses, making cracking games using
the system a daunting task.^[33]
It was only more than a month after the PC release in the first week of
April that software was released that could bypass Ubisoft’s DRM in
Assassin’s Creed 2, demonstrating its strength. The software did this by
emulating a Ubisoft server for the game. Later that month, a real crack
was released that was able to remove the connection requirement
altogether.^[34][35] No fully working crack for Silent Hunter V has been confirmed.

In early March, 2010, Uplay servers suffered a period of inaccessibility due to a large scale DDoS attack, causing around 5% of game owners to become locked out of playing their game.^[36] The company later credited owners of the affected games with a free download, and there has been no further downtime.^[37]

Some most prominent cases making use of online DRM technology SecuROM include Spore, BioShock, Mass Effect and Gears Of War.

[edit] E-books

Electronic books read on a personal computer or an e-book reader
typically use DRM restrictions to limit copying, printing, and sharing
of e-books. E-books are usually limited to a certain number of reading
devices and some e-publishers prevent any copying or printing. Some
commentators believe that DRM is something that makes E-book publishing
complex.^[38]

There are four main ebook formats at present. Mobipocket, Topaz, ePub and PDF.
The Amazon Kindle uses Mobipocket and Topaz and it also supports native
PDF format ebooks and native PDF files. Other ebook readers mostly use
ePub format ebooks, but with differing DRM schemes.

There are four main ebook DRM schemes at present, one each from
Adobe, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Adobe’s Adept DRM is
applied to ePubs and PDFs, and can be read by several third-party ebook
readers, as well as Adobe’s Adobe Digital Editions software. Apple’s
Fairplay DRM is applied to ePubs,and can currently only be read by
Apple’s iBooks app on iOS devices. Barnes & Noble’s DRM scheme is
implemented by Adobe, and is applied to ePubs and the older Palm format
ebooks. Amazon’s DRM is an adaption of the original Mobipocket
encryption, and is applied to Amazon’s Mobipocket and Topaz format
ebooks.

Two software programs to view e-books are Adobe Reader and Microsoft Reader.^[39]
Each program uses a slightly different approach to DRM. The first
version of Adobe Acrobat e-book Reader to have encryption technologies
was version 5.05. In the later version 6.0, the technologies of the PDF
reader and the e-book reader were combined, allowing it to read both
DRM-restricted and unrestricted files.^[39]
After opening the file, the user is able to view the rights statement,
which outlines actions available for the specific document. For example,
for a freely transferred PDF,
printing, copying to the clipboard, and other basic functions are
available to the user. However, when viewing a more highly restricted e-book, the user is unable to print the book, copy or paste selections.^[39] The level of restriction is specified by the publisher or distribution agency.^[40]

Microsoft Reader,
which exclusively reads e-books in a .lit format, contains its own DRM
software. In Microsoft Reader there are three different levels of access
control depending on the e-book: sealed e-books, inscribed e-books and
owner exclusive e-books. Sealed e-books have the least amount of
restriction and only prevent the document from being modified.^[39]
Therefore, the reader cannot alter the content of the book to change
the ending, for instance. Inscribed e-books are the next level of
restriction. After purchasing and downloading the e-book, Microsoft
Reader puts a digital ID tag to identify the owner of the e-book.
Therefore, this discourages distribution of the e-book because it is
inscribed with the owner’s name making it possible to trace it back to
the original copy that was distributed.^[39]
Other e-book software uses similar DRM schemes. For example, Palm
Digital Media, now known as Ereader, links the credit card information
of the purchaser to the e-book copy in order to discourage distribution
of the books.^[41]

The most stringent form of security that Microsoft Reader offers is
called owner exclusive e-books, which uses traditional DRM technologies.
To buy the e-book the consumer must first open Microsoft Reader, which
ensures that when the book is downloaded it becomes linked to the
computer’s Microsoft Passport
account. Thus the e-book can only be opened with the computer with
which it was downloaded, preventing copying and distribution of the
text.^[39]

In one instance of DRM that caused a rift with consumers, Amazon.com remotely deleted purchased copies of George Orwell‘s 1984 and Animal Farm from customer’s Amazon Kindles after providing them a refund for the purchased products.^[42] Commenters have widely described these actions as Orwellian, and have alluded to Big Brother from Orwell’s 1984.^{[43][44][45][46]} After an apology from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the Free Software Foundation
has written that this is just one more example of the excessive power
Amazon has to remotely censor what people read through its software, and
called upon Amazon to free its e-book reader and drop DRM.^[47]
It was then revealed that the reason behind the deletion on Amazon’s
part was due to the ebooks in question being unauthorized reproductions
of Orwell’s works over which the company that published and sold it on
Amazon’s service had no rights as the works were not within the public
domain. ^[48]

[edit] DRM and documents

Enterprise digital rights management (E-DRM or ERM) is the application of DRM technology to the control of access to corporate documents such as Microsoft Word, PDF, and AutoCAD files, emails, and intranet web pages rather than to the control of consumer media.^[49] E-DRM, now more commonly referenced as IRM (Information Rights Management), is generally intended to prevent the unauthorized use (such as industrial or corporate espionage or inadvertent release) of proprietary documents. IRM typically integrates with content management system software.

DRM has been used by organizations such as the British Library in its secure electronic delivery service
to permit worldwide access to substantial numbers of rare (and in many
cases unique) documents which, for legal reasons, were previously only
available to authorized individuals actually visiting the Library’s
document centre at Boston Spa in England.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Watermarks

Digital watermarks are features of media that are added during production or distribution. Digital watermarks involve data that is arguably steganographically embedded within the audio or video data.

Watermarks can be used for different purposes that may include:

• recording the copyright owner
• recording the distributor
• recording the distribution chain
• identifying the purchaser of the music

Watermarks are not complete DRM mechanisms in their own right, but
are used as part of a system for Digital Rights Management, such as
helping provide prosecution evidence for purely legal avenues of rights
management, rather than direct technological restriction. Some programs
used to edit video and/or audio may distort, delete, or otherwise
interfere with watermarks. Signal/modulator-carrier chromatography may
also separate watermarks from original audio or detect them as glitches.
Use of third party media players and other advanced programs render
watermarking useless^{[citation needed][isputed_statement” title=”Wikipediaisputed statement”>dubious – igital_rights_management#Dubious” title=”Talkigital rights management”>discuss]}.
Additionally, comparison of two separately obtained copies of audio
using simple, home-grown algorithms can often reveal watermarks. New
methods of detection are currently under investigation by both industry
and non-industry researchers.

[edit] Metadata

Sometimes, metadata
is included in purchased music which records information such as the
purchaser’s name, account information, or email address. This
information is not embedded in the played audio or video data, like a
watermark, but is kept separate, but within the file or stream.

As an example, metadata is used in media purchased from Apple’s
iTunes Store for DRM-free as well as DRM-restricted versions of their
music or videos. This information is included as MPEG standard metadata.^[50][51]

[edit] Laws regarding DRM

Digital rights management systems have received some international legal backing by implementation of the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT). Article 11 of the Treaty requires nations party to the treaties to enact laws against DRM circumvention.

The WCT has been implemented in most member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization. The American implementation is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), while in Europe the treaty has been implemented by the 2001 European directive on copyright, which requires member states of the European Union to implement legal protections for technological prevention measures. In 2006, the lower house of the French parliament adopted such legislation as part of the controversial DADVSI
law, but added that protected DRM techniques should be made
interoperable, a move which caused widespread controversy in the United
States.

[edit] Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is an amendment to United States copyright law
passed unanimously on May 14, 1998, which criminalizes the production
and dissemination of technology that allows users to circumvent
technical copy-restriction methods. Under the Act, circumvention of a
technological measure that effectively controls access to a work is
illegal if done with the primary intent of violating the rights of
copyright holders.^{[verification needed]} (For a more detailed analysis of the statute, see WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act.)

Reverse engineering of existing systems is expressly permitted under
the Act under specific conditions. Under the reverse engineering safe
harbor, circumvention necessary to achieve interoperability with other
software is specifically authorized. See 17 U.S.C. Sec. 1201(f).
Open-source software to decrypt content scrambled with the Content
Scrambling System and other encryption techniques presents an
intractable problem with the application of the Act. Much depends on the
intent of the actor. If the decryption is done for the purpose of
achieving interoperability of open source operating systems with
proprietary operating systems, the circumvention would be protected by
Section 1201(f) the Act. Cf., Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley,
273 F.3d 429 (2d Cir. 2001) at notes 5 and 16. However, dissemination of
such software for the purpose of violating or encouraging others to
violate copyrights has been held illegal. See Universal City Studios,
Inc. v. Reimerdes, 111 F. Supp. 2d 346 (S.D.N.Y. 2000).

On 22 May 2001, the European Union passed the EU Copyright Directive, an implementation of the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty that addressed many of the same issues as the DMCA.

The DMCA has been largely ineffective in protecting DRM systems^[52]
, as software allowing users to circumvent DRM remains widely
available. However, those who wish to preserve the DRM systems have
attempted to use the Act to restrict the distribution and development of
such software, as in the case of DeCSS.

Although the Act contains an exception for research, the exception is
subject to vague qualifiers that do little to reassure researchers.
Cf., 17 U.S.C. Sec. 1201(g). The DMCA has had an impact on cryptography, because many^[who?] fear that cryptanalytic research may violate the DMCA. The arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov
in 2001, for alleged infringement of the DMCA, was a highly publicized
example of the law’s use to prevent or penalize development of anti-DRM
measures. Sklyarov was arrested in the United States after a
presentation at DEF CON,
and subsequently spent several months in jail. The DMCA has also been
cited as chilling to non-criminal inclined users, such as students of cryptanalysis (including, in a well-known instance, Professor Felten and students at Princeton^[53]), and security consultants such as the Netherlands based Niels Ferguson, who has declined to publish information about vulnerabilities he discovered in an Intel secure-computing scheme because of his concern about being arrested under the DMCA when he travels to the US.

On 25 April 2007 the European Parliament supported the first
directive of EU, which aims to harmonize criminal law in the member
states. It adopted a first reading report on harmonizing the national
measures for fighting copyright abuse. If the European Parliament and
the Council approve the legislation, the submitted directive will oblige
the member states to consider a crime a violation of international
copyright committed with commercial purposes. The text suggests numerous
measures: from fines to imprisonment, depending on the gravity of the
offense.

The EP members supported the Commission motion, changing some of the
texts. They excluded patent rights from the range of the directive and
decided that the sanctions should apply only to offenses with commercial
purposes. Copying for personal, non-commercial purposes was also
excluded from the range of the directive.

[edit] International issues

In Europe, there are several ongoing dialog activities that are characterized by their consensus-building intention:

• Workshop on Digital Rights Management of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), January 2001.^[54]
• Participative preparation of the European Committee for Standardization/Information Society Standardization System (CEN/ISSS) DRM Report, 2003 (finished).^[55]
• DRM Workshops of Directorate-General for Information Society and Media (European Commission) (finished), and the work of the DRM working groups (finished), as well as the work of the High Level Group on DRM (ongoing).^[56]
• Consultation process of the European Commission, DG Internal Market,
  on the Communication COM(2004)261 by the European Commission on
  “Management of Copyright and Related Rights” (closed).^[57]
• The INDICARE
  project is an ongoing dialogue on consumer acceptability of DRM
  solutions in Europe. It is an open and neutral platform for exchange of
  facts and opinions, mainly based on articles by authors from science and
  practice.
• The AXMEDIS project is a European Commission Integrated Project of the FP6. The main goal of AXMEDIS is automating the content production, copy protection and distribution, reducing the related costs and supporting DRM at both B2B and B2C areas harmonizing them.
• The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property is the result of a commission by the British Government from Andrew Gowers,
  undertaken in December 2005 and published in 2006, with recommendations
  regarding copyright term, exceptions, orphaned works, and copyright
  enforcement.

[edit] Controversy

[edit] DRM opposition

Many organizations, prominent individuals, and computer scientists are opposed to DRM. Two notable DRM critics are John Walker, as expressed for instance, in his article The Digital Imprimatur: How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie back in the bottle,^[58] and Richard Stallman in his article The Right to Read^[59]
and in other public statements: “DRM is an example of a malicious
feature – a feature designed to hurt the user of the software, and
therefore, it’s something for which there can never be toleration”.^[60] Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University heads a British organization which opposes DRM and similar efforts in the UK and elsewhere. Cory Doctorow,
a prominent writer and technology blogger, spoke on the Microsoft
campus criticizing the technology, the morality, and the marketing of
DRM.^[61]

There have been numerous others who see DRM at a more fundamental level. TechMediums.com
argues that DRM-free music allows for viral marketing, arguing that
independent artists benefit from “free marketing” and can then focus on
revenues from higher margin products like merchandise and concert ticket
sales. This is similar to some of the ideas in Michael H. Goldhaber’s
presentation about “The Attention Economy and the Net” at a 1997
conference on the “Economics of Digital Information.”^[62] (sample quote from the “Advice for the Transition” section of that presentation:^[62] “If you can’t figure out how to afford it without charging, you may be doing something wrong.”)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and similar organizations such as FreeCulture.org also hold positions which are characterized as opposed to DRM.

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure has criticized DRM’s impact as a trade barrier from a free market perspective.

The final version of the GNU General Public License
version 3, as released by the Free Software Foundation, has a provision
that ‘strips’ DRM of its legal value, so people can break the DRM on
GPL software without breaking laws like the DMCA. Also, in May 2006, the FSF launched a “Defective by Design” campaign against DRM.^[63][64]

Creative Commons provides licensing options encouraging the expansion of and building upon creative work without the use of DRM.^[65]
In addition, the use of DRM by a licensee to restrict the freedoms
granted by a Creative Commons license is a breach of the Baseline Rights
asserted by each license.^[66]

Bill Gates spoke about DRM at CES in 2006. According to him, DRM is
not where it should be, and causes problems for legitimate consumers
while trying to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate users.^[67]

According to Steve Jobs,
Apple opposes DRM music after a public letter calling its music labels
to stop requiring DRM on its iTunes Store. As of January 6, 2009, the
iTunes Store is DRM-free for songs.^[68] However, Apple considers DRM on video content as a separate issue and has not removed DRM from all of its video catalog.

As already noted, many DRM opponents consider “digital rights
management” to be a misnomer. They argue that DRM manages rights (or
access) the same way prison manages freedom and often refer to it as
“digital restrictions management”. Alternatively, ZDNet Executive Editor
David Berlind suggests the term “Content Restriction, Annulment and
Protection” or “CRAP” for short.^[69]

The Norwegian Consumer rights organization “Forbrukerrådet”
complained to Apple Inc. in 2007 about the company’s use of DRM in, and
in conjunction with, its iPod and iTunes products. Apple was accused of
restricting users’ access to their music and videos in an unlawful way,
and of using EULAs which conflict with Norwegian consumer legislation. The complaint was supported by consumers’ ombudsmen in Sweden and Denmark, and is currently being reviewed in the EU. Similarly, the United States Federal Trade Commission held hearings in March 2009 to review disclosure of DRM limitations to customers’ use of media products.^[70]

The use of DRM may also be a barrier to future historians, since
technologies designed to permit data to be read only on particular
machines, or with particular keys, or for certain periods, may well make
future data recovery impossible — see Digital Revolution.

DRM opponents argue that the presence of DRM violates existing private property
rights and restricts a range of heretofore normal and legal user
activities. A DRM component would control a device a user owns (such as a
Digital audio player)
by restricting how it may act with regards to certain content,
overriding some of the user’s wishes (for example, preventing the user
from burning a copyrighted song to CD
as part of a compilation or a review). An example of this effect may be
seen in Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system in which content
using a Protected Media Path is disabled or degraded depending on the
DRM scheme’s evaluation of whether the hardware and its use are
‘secure’.^[71]
All forms of DRM depend on the DRM enabled device (e.g., computer, DVD
player, TV) imposing restrictions that (at least by intent) cannot be
disabled or modified by the user. Key issues around digital rights
management such as the right to make personal copies, provisions for
persons to lend copies to friends, provisions for service
discontinuance, hardware agnosticism, software and operating system
agnosticism,^[72]
contracts for public libraries, and customers´ protection against
one-side amendments of the contract by the publisher have not been fully
addressed.(see references 80-89) It has also been pointed out that it
is entirely unclear whether owners of content with DRM are legally
permitted to pass on their property as inheritance to another person.^[73]

Tools like FairUse4WM have been created to strip Windows Media of DRM restrictions.^[74]

Valve Corporation President Gabe Newell
also stated “most DRM strategies are just dumb” because they only
decrease the value of a game in the consumer’s eyes. Newell’s suggests
combating piracy by “[creating] greater value for customers through
service value”.^[75]

[edit] “DRM-Free”

Due to the strong opposition that exists to DRM, many companies and artists have begun advertising their products as “DRM-Free”.^[76][77][78]

Apple began selling “DRM-Free” music through their iTunes store in April 2007.^[79]
It was later revealed that the DRM-Free iTunes files were still
embedded with each user’s account information, a technique called Digital watermarking generally less restrictive.^{[lease_clarify” title=”Wikipedialease clarify”>clarification needed]} In January 2009, iTunes began marketing all of their songs as “DRM-Free”,^[80] however iTunes continues to use DRM on movies, TV shows, ringtones, and audiobooks.^[81]

[edit] Impossible task

Bruce Schneier
has written about the futility of digital copy prevention and says it’s
an impossible task. He says “What the entertainment industry is trying
to do is to use technology to contradict that natural law. They want a
practical way to make copying hard enough to save their existing
business. But they are doomed to fail.”^[82] He has also described trying to make digital files uncopyable as being like “trying to make water not wet”.^[83] The creators of StarForce also take this stance, stating that “The purpose of copy protection is not making the game uncrackable – it is impossible.” ^[84]

Both the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers have historically opposed DRM, even going so far as to name AACS as a technology “most likely to fail” in an issue of IEEE Spectrum.^[85]

[edit] Shortcomings

[edit] Methods to bypass DRM

There are many methods to bypass DRM control on audio and video content.

One simple method to bypass DRM on audio files is to burn the content to an audio CD and then rip
it into DRM-free files. This is only possible when the software that
plays these DRM-restricted audio files allows CD-burning. Some software
products simplify and automate this burn-rip process by allowing the
user to burn music to a CD-RW disc or to a Virtual CD-R drive, then
automatically ripping and encoding the music, and automatically
repeating this process until all selected music has been converted,
rather than forcing the user to do this one CD (72–80 minutes worth of
music) at a time.

Many software programs have been developed that intercept the data
stream as it is decrypted out of the DRM-restricted file, and then use
this data to construct a DRM-free file. These programs require a
decryption key. Programs that do this for DVDs, HD DVDs, and Blu-ray
Discs include universal decryption keys in the software itself. Programs
that do this for TiVo ToGo recordings, iTunes audio, and PlaysForSure
songs, however, rely on the user’s own key — that is, they can only
process content that the user has legally acquired under his or her own
account.

Another method is to use software to record the signals being sent
through the audio or video cards, or to plug analog recording devices
into the analog outputs of the media player. These techniques utilize
the so-called “analog hole” (see below).

[edit] Analog hole

All forms of DRM for audio and visual material (excluding interactive materials, e.g. videogames) are subject to the analog hole,
namely that in order for a viewer to play the material, the digital
signal must be turned into an analog signal containing light and/or
sound for the viewer, and so available to be copied as no DRM is capable
of controlling content in this form. In other words, a user could play a
purchased audio file while using a separate program to record the sound
back into the computer into a DRM-free file format.

All DRM to date can therefore be bypassed by recording this signal
and digitally storing and distributing it in a non DRM limited form, by
anyone who has the technical means of recording the analog stream.
However the conversion from digital to analog and back is likely to
force a loss of quality, particularly when using lossy digital formats. HDCP is an attempt to restrict the analog hole, although it is largely ineffective.^[86][87]

Asus
released a soundcard which features a function called “Analog Loopback
Transformation” to bypass the restrictions of DRM. This feature allows
the user to record DRM-restricted audio via the soundcard’s built-in
analog I/O connection.^[88][89]

[edit] DRM on general computing platforms

Many of the DRM systems in use are designed to work on general
purpose computing hardware, such as desktop PCs apparently because this
equipment is felt to be a major contributor to revenue loss from
disallowed copying. Large commercial copyright infringers (“pirates”)
avoid consumer equipment^{[citation needed]}, so losses from such infringers will not be covered by such provisions.

Such schemes, especially software based ones, can never be wholly
secure since the software must include all the information necessary to
decrypt the content, such as the decryption keys.
An attacker will be able to extract this information, directly decrypt
and copy the content, which bypasses the restrictions imposed by a DRM
system.^[61]

[edit] DRM on purpose-built hardware

Many DRM schemes use encrypted media which requires purpose-built
hardware to hear or see the content. This appears to ensure that only
licensed users (those with the hardware) can access the content. It
additionally tries to protect a secret decryption key from the users of
the system.

While this in principle can work, it is extremely difficult to build
the hardware to protect the secret key against a sufficiently determined
adversary. Many such systems have failed in the field. Once the secret
key is known, building a version of the hardware that performs no checks
is often relatively straightforward. In addition user verification
provisions are frequently subject to attack, pirate decryption being among the most frequented ones.

A common real-world example can be found in commercial direct broadcast satellite television systems such as DirecTV and Malaysia’s Astro. The company uses tamper-resistant smart cards
to store decryption keys so that they are hidden from the user and the
satellite receiver. However, the system has been compromised in the
past, and DirecTV has been forced to roll out periodic updates and
replacements for its smart cards.

[edit] Watermarks

Watermarks can very typically be removed, although degradation of video or audio can occur.

[edit] Mass piracy failure

Mass piracy of hard copies does not necessarily need DRM to be
decrypted or removed, as it can be achieved by bit-perfect copying of a
legally obtained medium without accessing the decrypted content.
Additionally, still-encrypted disk images can be distributed over the Internet and played on legitimately licensed players.

[edit] Obsolescence

When standards and formats change, it may be difficult to transfer
DRM-restricted content to new media. Additionally, any system that
requires contact with an authentication server is vulnerable to that
server becoming unavailable, as happened^[90] in 2007 when videos purchased from Major League Baseball (mlb.com) prior to 2006 became unplayable due to a change to the servers that validate the licenses.

Amazon PDF and LIT ebooks – In August 2006, Amazon stopped
selling DRMed PDF and .LIT format ebooks. Customers were unable to
download purchased ebooks 30 days after that date, losing access to
their purchased content on new devices.^{[91] [92]}

Microsoft Zune – When Microsoft introduced their Zune^[93] media player in 2006, it did not support content that uses Microsoft’s own PlaysForSure DRM scheme they had previously been selling. The EFF calls this “a raw deal”.^[94]

MSN Music – In April 2008, Microsoft sent an email to former
customers of the now-defunct MSN Music store: “As of August 31, 2008, we
will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the
songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional
computers. You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs
downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before
August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional
computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully
play.”^[95]

However, to avoid a public relations disaster, Microsoft re-issued MSN Music shutdown statement on June 19^th
and allowed the users to use their licenses until the end of 2011:
“After careful consideration, Microsoft has decided to continue to
support the authorization of new computers and devices and delivery of
new license keys for MSN Music customers through at least the end of
2011, after which we will evaluate how much this functionality is still
being used and what steps should be taken next to support our customers.
This means you will continue to be able to listen to your purchased
music and transfer your music to new PCs and devices beyond the
previously announced August 31, 2008 date.”^[96]

Yahoo! Music Store – On July 23, 2008, the Yahoo! Music Store
emailed its customers to tell them it will be shutting down effective
September 30, 2008 and the DRM license key servers will be taken
offline.^[97]

Walmart – In August 2007, Walmart‘s
online music division started offering (DRM-free) MP3s as an option.
Starting in February 2008, they made all sales DRM-free. On September
26, 2008, the Walmart Music Team notified its customers via email they
will be shutting down their DRM servers October 9, 2008 and any
DRM-encumbered music acquired from them will no longer be accessible
unless ripped to a non-DRM format before that date.^[98]

After bad press and negative reaction from customers, on October 9, 2008, Walmart decided not to take its DRM servers offline. ^[99]

Fictionwise / Overdrive – In January 2009, OverDrive informed Fictionwise that they would no longer be providing downloads for purchasers of e-books
through Fictionwise as of 31 January 2009. No reason was provided to
Fictionwise as to why they were being shut down. This prevents previous
purchasers from being able to renew their books on new devices.^[100]
Fictionwise is working to provide replacement ebooks for its customers
in alternative, non-DRM formats, but does not have the rights to provide
all of the books in different formats.^[100]

Ads for Adobe PDF – Also in January 2009, Adobe Systems announced that as of March 2009 they would no longer operate the servers that served ads to their PDF reader. Depending on the restriction settings used when PDF documents were created, they may no longer be readable.^[101]

Adobe Content Server 3 for Adobe PDF – In April 2009, Adobe Systems announced that as of March 30, 2009 the Adobe Content 3 server would no longer activate new installations of Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat.
In addition, the ability to migrate content from Adobe Content Server 3
to Adobe Content Server 4 would cease from mid-December 2009. Anyone
who failed to migrate their DRMed PDF files during this nine month
window lost access to their content the next time they had to re-install
their copy of Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat.^[102]

Harper Collins ebook store – In November 2010, Harper Collins
announced that as of November 19, 2010, their eBook Store was
discontinued, and advised all customers to download and archive their
purchases before December 19, 2010, when purchased titles would no
longer be accessible. Loss of access to Mobipocket ebooks on new
devices. ^[103]

CyberRead ebook store – In February 2011, CyberRead
announced that they were closing down, and advised all customers to
download and archive their purchases. Loss of access to Mobipocket
ebooks on new devices. ^[104]

[edit] Moral and Legitimacy Implications

1. One of the principles of the Rule of Law is that “The law can be
   readily determined and is stable enough to allow individuals to plan
   their affairs.” ^[105]
2. A problem with DRM that EFF point to is: “.. in an effort to attract
   customers, these music services try to obscure the restrictions they
   impose on you with clever marketing.” ^[106]
3. DRM laws are widely flouted: according to Australia Official Music
   Chart Survey, music theft from all causes is practiced by millions of
   people. ^[107]

That is, the law, or in this case, the contract between the user and
seller, cannot be readily determined, and is widely broken. These facts
reduce the ability of a law-abiding person to both detect when they’ve
broken the law, and to feel a moral obligation to abide by DRM contract
and law.

1. Is burning a music CD breaking the law?
2. Is giving a CD I’ve purchased to a friend breaking the law?
3. Is burning a CD, and then giving it to a friend, breaking the law?
4. Is purchasing a CD, and listening to it, and then returning it to the store for resale breaking the law?
5. Is purchasing, burning a CD, and then returning it to the store for resale breaking the law?

The answers to these questions are non-obvious, which breaks one of the fundamental principles of the Rule of Law listed above. ^[108]

[edit] Not all piracy is undesirable to digital rights holders

Microsoft has stated that if someone is going to steal software, they want it to be their software they steal. ^[109]
There can be real benefits to software makers to theft, since the unit
cost of digital theft is zero, or near-zero, and their belief is that
some software pirates will become trained in their software and
eventually pay for it. An analogous argument was made in an early paper
by Kathleen Conner and Richard Rummelt.^[110] A subsequent study of digital rights management for ebooks by Gal Oestreicher-Singer and Arun Sundararajan
showed that relaxing some forms of DRM can be beneficial to digital
rights holders because the losses from piracy are outweighed by the
increases in value to legal buyers.^[111]

[edit] Business Model Ideas

Music is the prominent copy written material illegally downloaded
from the Internet. The fairly new technology has given the public access
to resources that were difficult to obtain before. Due to the Internet,
businesses must consider innovative ideas to prevent people from
illegally downloading materials. Music is illegally downloaded because
the files are small, products can be easily duplicated, and younger
people have the resources and knowledge to manipulate the system ^[112].
One way to prevent illegal downloading is to have technical protection
schemes, which includes using encryption or limiting the number of
computers a file can be shared on. The second way to prevent illegal
file sharing is to change the business model ^[113].

[edit] Easy and Cheap

The first business model to prevent from illegal file sharing is to
make the downloading easy and cheap. The use of a noncommercial site
makes downloading music complex. If someone misspells the artist’s name,
the search will leave the consumer dissatisfied. Also, some illegal
file sharing websites lead to many viruses that attach themselves to the
files. Some sites limit the traffic, which can make downloading a song a
long and frustrating process. If the songs are all provided on one
site, and reasonably prices, consumers will purchase the music legally
to overcome the frustrations that can occur downloading illegally. ^[114]

[edit] Digital Content to Promote Traditional Product

Many artists are using the Internet to give away music to create
awareness and liking to a new upcoming album. The artists release a new
song on the internet for free download, which consumers can download.
The hope is to have the listeners buy the new album because of the free
download ^[115].
A common practice used today is releasing a song or two on the internet
for consumers to indulge. In 2007, Radiohead released an album named In
Rainbows, in which fans could pay any amount they want, or download it
for free.^[116] The disadvantage to giving away a new single on an album is that it may discourage the consumers from buying the whole album.

[edit] Disintermediation and Give it Away

Artists make most of their revenue through performing concerts. While
album sales do increase their wealth, artists do not completely rely on
the sales for their salary. The business model of disintermediation
means to eliminate the middlemen. A person can purchase songs and albums
via the internet. There would be no communication between the consumer
and a store. Another option is to give all the music away. The artists
will not lose many profits from album sales, and the music will still be
wide spread. The main disadvantage to giving away music for free is
that the record labels may not allow it. Record labels sign artists and
handle the promotion and marketing of the artist. The sales of albums
act as a source of revenue to the labels, which from a business
perspective, will decrease their profits.^[117]

[edit] The Artistic Freedom Voucher

The Artistic Freedom Voucher (AFV) introduced by Dean Baker is a way
for consumers to support “creative and artistic work.” In this system,
each consumer would have a refundable tax credit of $100 to give to any
artist of creative work. To restrict fraud, the artists must register
with the government. The voucher prohibits any artist that receives the
benefits from copyrighting their material for a certain length of time.
Consumers can obtain music for a certain amount of time easily and the
consumer decides which artists receive the $100. The money can either be
given to one artist or to many, the distribution is up to the consumer.^[118]

[edit] Historical note

A very early implementation of DRM was the Software Service System (SSS) devised by the Japanese engineer Ryoichi Mori in 1983 ^[119] and subsequently refined under the name superdistribution.
The SSS was based on encryption, with specialized hardware that
controlled decryption and also enabled payments to be sent to the
copyright holder. The underlying principle of the SSS and subsequently
of superdistribution was that the distribution of encrypted digital
products should be completely unrestricted and that users of those
products would not just be permitted to redistribute them but would
actually be encouraged to do so.

[edit] See also

[edit] Related concepts

• Compliance and Robustness
• Copyleft
• Copyright
• Cryptography
• Data room
• Dongle
• Fair use
• Floating licensing
• Hardware restrictions
• License manager
• ODRL
• Open Music Model
• Product activation
• Smart contracts
• Smart Cow Problem
• Software metering
• Superdistribution
• Tivoization
• Trusted Computing
• Voluntary Collective Licensing
• XrML

[edit] Lawsuits

• DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. v. Bunner
• Universal v. Reimerdes
• DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. v. Kaleidescape, Inc.
• RealNetworks, Inc. v. DVD Copy Control Association, Inc.

[edit] Organizations

• European Information, Communications and Consumer Electronics Technology Industry Associations
• Trusted Computing Group
• Motion Picture Association of America
• Recording Industry Association of America
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Open Rights Group
• Open Mobile Alliance
• Defective by Design, a campaign of the Free Software Foundation
• Pirate Party, a Swedish political party which is a proponent of free culture and free knowledge
• Free Software Foundation Europe
• Secure Digital Music Initiative
• Open Entertainment Alliance

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Digital rights management

• Lawrence Lessig‘s Free Culture, published by Basic Books in 2004, is available for free download in PDF format.
  The book is a legal and social history of copyright. Lessig is well
  known, in part, for arguing recent landmark cases on copyright law. A
  Professor of Law at Stanford University,
  Lessig writes for an educated lay audience, including for non-lawyers.
  He is, for the most part, an opponent of DRM technologies.
• Rosenblatt, B. et al., Digital Rights Management: Business and Technology, published by M&T Books (John Wiley & Sons) in 2001. An overview of DRM technology, business implications for content publishers, and relationship to U.S. copyright law.
• Consumer’s Guide to DRM,
  published in 10 languages (Czech, German, Greek, English, Spanish,
  French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Swedish), produced by the INDICARE research and dialogue project
• Eberhard Becker, Willms Buhse, Dirk Günnewig, Niels Rump: Digital Rights Management – Technological, Economic, Legal and Political Aspects. An 800 page compendium from 60 different authors on DRM.
• Arun Sundararajan‘s Managing Digital Piracy: Pricing and Protection
  uses the following digital rights conjecture, that “digital rights
  increases the incidence of digital piracy, and that managing digital
  rights therefore involves restricting the rights of usage that
  contribute to customer value” to show that creative pricing can be an
  effective substitute for excessively stringent DRM.
• Fetscherin, M., Implications of Digital Rights Management on the Demand for Digital Content, provides an excellent view on DRM from a consumers perspective. “Buch- und online Publikationen”. dissertation.de. 1998-02-05. Retrieved 2010-08-31.igital_rights_management”>
• The Pig and the Box,
  a book with colorful illustrations and having a coloring book version,
  by ‘MCM’. It describes DRM in terms suited to kids, written in reaction
  to a Canadian entertainment industry copyright education initiative,
  aimed at children.
• Present State and Emerging Scenarios of Digital Rights Management Systems
  – A paper by Marc Fetscherin which provides an overview of the various
  components of DRM, pro and cons and future outlook of how, where, when
  such systems might be used.
• DRM is Like Paying for Ice – Richard Menta article on MP3 Newswire discusses how DRM is implemented in ways to control consumers, but is undermining perceived product value in the process.
• A Semantic Web Approach to Digital Rights Management – PhD Thesis by Roberto García that tries to address DRM issues using Semantic Web technologies and methodologies.
• Patricia Akester, “Technological Accommodation of Conflicts between
  Freedom of Expression and DRM: The First Empirical Assessment” available
  at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1469412
  (unveiling, through empirical lines of enquiry, (1) whether certain
  acts which are permitted by law are being adversely affected by the use
  of DRM and (2) whether technology can accommodate conflicts between
  freedom of expression and DRM).

[edit] External links

• Copyright and Technology Blog featuring analysis of digital rights technologies and related legal issues
• BBC News |Technology Q&A: What is DRM?
• Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks by Richard Stallman
• Digital Bits Skeptic DRM technology in media publishing
• Digital Rights Management
  from CEN/ISSS (European Committee for Standardization / Information
  Society Standardization System). Contains a range of possible
  definitions for DRM from various stakeholders. 30 September 2003
• PC Game Piracy Examined Article investigating the effects of DRM and piracy on the video game industry
• Windows Media DRM FAQ from Microsoft
• www.radiovalladolid.com How to build a circuit for the reception of DRM

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