Digital Rights Management

As digital technology continues to grow and develop, Digital Rights Management (DRM) works to keep up with these changes. Due to the millions of illegal music downloads that occur each day, DRM must continue to create new ways to stop music listeners from illegally copying and distributing copyrighted material. DRM tries to ensure that copyright laws are not broken by using innovative technologies that are able to track how and when music is used.

Music companies include DRM with their music to protect against people that illegally copy digital music and distribute it without the rights holder’s permission. Some DRM technology limits the number of times a person can listen to or copy a piece of music. Other DRM technology simply protects copyrighted material from being copied at all by installing a code that makes it extremely difficult for hackers to break.

In addition to providing protection against illegal uses of material via technology, DRM also enforces contracts that consumers are asked to sign before purchasing music. Most of these contracts are signed over the Web due to the large amount of downloadable music that is purchased online. These contracts lay out rules regarding copying, distributing, or changing digital material, and costumers that sign the contracts are held accountable for abiding by them. Whether particular terms in these contracts are enforced depends on how long a customer had to view the contract and which laws are involved.

Those familiar with the Apple iTunes Music Store know that before purchasing any music, customers are asked to sign a “Terms of Use” contract in which they agree only to burn their music purchased from iTunes onto CD-ROMs for personal uses. Recently, Apple has changed its policy towards DRM. Before this change, most music available for purchase through the iTunes Music Store had DRM that prevented customers from having the ability to play this music on almost every music-playing device other than those produced by Apple. In other words, Apple made sure that consumers were only able to listen to iTunes music on iPods and iPhones. This policy has changed, however, and now Apple is removing DRM from all of their music. This will allow consumers to listen to music purchased through iTunes on any music-playing device, even if it is not made by Apple. The removal of DRM is opening up new opportunities for music listeners and has brought new customers to iTunes.

DRM is important for preventing illegal use of copyrighted material, but it can limit what listeners can do with their music. Before iTunes made the switch to non-DRM music, many people argued that if someone legally buys a song or album, they should have the right to play it on any devices they wish. What do you think? Is DRM is good thing all of the time or are there some instances where they become overbearing? Please share your thoughts.