In Wikipedia, DRM is defined as “technologies used by publishers (or copyright owners) to control access to and usage of digital data (such as software, music, movies) and hardware, handling usage restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work”.
Beside the technical aspects, it is interesting to study DRM as a symptom of the clash between traditional content providers (music majors, movie industry) and cybernauts at the Information age. The first ones want to preserve the traditional channels to provide entertainement content towards people whereas some of the others who access it for free as digital files (throught P2P networds). This phenomenon raises a major issue : how musical and movie industry could survive if they do not develop into a new economic model and if P2P practices keep on growing?
Currently it seems that entertainement industries do not want to ask themselves this question, they prefer to reply to the threat by using DRM. I don’t think this is the right decision for two reasons. On the one hand hackers and P2P communities always have the tool to bypass the DRM as soon as they are implemented. On the other hand it seems that DRM affect mostly legitimate purchasers who are not to good with technologies and who would like to listen or watch what they bought on any format and device hey want. Indeed contents protected by DRM cannot easily be transferred from one device to another. As far as I am concerned, I hate it when I can’t easily burn a CD to play from Itunes files so as to play it in my car. The easiest and fastest way to do so is always to check on some P2P network to find the same files without DRM and burn it.
Links :
The official site of DRM consortium
French activists against DRM
Soulseek : the best p2p network to find electronic music. I know its wrong...
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