Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to
digital content
Digital content is any content that exists in the form of digital data. Also known as digital media, digital content is stored on digital or analog storage in specific formats. Forms of digital content include information that is digitally broad ...
. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as
access control
In the fields of physical security and information security, access control (AC) is the selective restriction of access to a place or other resource, while access management describes the process. The act of ''accessing'' may mean consuming ...
technologies can restrict the use of
proprietary hardware
Proprietary hardware is computer hardware whose interface is controlled by the proprietor, often under patent or trade-secret protection.
Historically, most early computer hardware was designed as proprietary until the 1980s, when IBM PC changed ...
and
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
ed works.
DRM technologies govern the use, modification, and distribution of copyrighted works (such as
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
and multimedia content), as well as systems that enforce these policies within devices.
Laws in many countries criminalize the circumvention of DRM, communication about such circumvention, and the creation and distribution of tools used for such circumvention.
Such laws are part of the United States'
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...
(DMCA), and the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
's
Information Society Directive
The Information Society Directive (familiarly when first proposed, the Copyright Directive) is a directive of the European Union that was enacted to implement the WIPO Copyright Treaty and to harmonise aspects of copyright law across Europe, ...
(the French
DADVSI
Loi DADVSI (generally pronounced as ''dadsi'') is the abbreviation of the French ''Loi relative au droit d’auteur et aux droits voisins dans la société de l’information'' (in English: "law on authors' rights and related rights in the infor ...
is an example of a member state of the European Union implementing the directive).
DRM techniques include
licensing agreement
A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...
s and
encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...
.
The industry has expanded the usage of DRM to various hardware products, such as
Keurig
Keurig is a beverage brewing system for home and commercial use. The machines are manufactured by the American company Keurig Dr Pepper. The main Keurig products are: K-Cup pods, which are single-serve coffee containers; other beverage pods; and ...
's
coffeemaker
A coffeemaker, coffee maker or coffee machine is a cooking appliance used to brew coffee. While there are many different types of coffeemakers the two most common brewing principles use gravity or pressure to move hot water through coffee gr ...
s,
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
'
light bulb
An electric light, lamp, or light bulb is an electrical component that produces light. It is the most common form of artificial lighting. Lamps usually have a base made of ceramic, metal, glass, or plastic, which secures the lamp in the soc ...
s,
mobile device
A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...
power chargers, and
John Deere
Deere & Company, doing business as John Deere (), is an American corporation that manufactures agricultural machinery, heavy equipment, forestry machinery, diesel engines, drivetrains (axles, transmissions, gearboxes) used in heavy equipment, ...
's
tractor
A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most common ...
s. For instance, tractor companies try to prevent farmers from making
repairs
The technical meaning of maintenance involves functional checks, servicing, repairing or replacing of necessary devices, equipment, machinery, building infrastructure, and supporting utilities in industrial, business, and residential installa ...
via DRM.
DRM users argue that the technology is necessary to protect
intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
, just as physical locks prevent
personal property
property is property that is movable. In common law systems, personal property may also be called chattels or personalty. In civil law systems, personal property is often called movable property or movables—any property that can be moved fr ...
from theft,
that it can help the copyright holder maintain
artistic control
Artistic control or creative control is a term commonly used in media production, such as movies, television, and music production. A person with artistic control has the authority to decide how the final product will appear. In movies, this ...
, and to support licensing modalities such as rentals.
DRM is not without controversy. Critics of DRM contend that no evidence proves that DRM helps prevent
copyright infringement
Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...
, arguing that it serves only to inconvenience legitimate customers, and that DRM can stifle innovation and competition. Furthermore, works can become permanently inaccessible if the DRM scheme changes or if a required service is discontinued.
DRM technologies have been criticized for restricting individuals from copying or using the content legally, such as by
fair use
Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...
or by making backup copies. DRM is in common use by the
entertainment industry
Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and Interest (emotion), interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have dev ...
(''e.g.'', audio and video publishers).
Many online stores such as OverDrive, use DRM technologies, as do cable and satellite service operators. Apple removed DRM technology from
iTunes
iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...
around 2009. Typical DRM also prevents lending materials out through a library, or accessing works in the
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work
A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...
.
Introduction
The rise of digital media and analog-to-digital conversion technologies has increased the concerns of copyright-owners, particularly within the music and video industries. While
analog
Analog or analogue may refer to:
Computing and electronics
* Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable
** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals
*** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...
media inevitably lose quality with each
copy generation and during normal use, digital media files may be duplicated without limit with no degradation. Digital devices make it convenient for consumers to convert (
rip
Rest in peace (RIP), a phrase from the Latin (), is sometimes used in traditional Christian services and prayers, such as in the Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist denominations, to wish the soul of a decedent eternal rest and peace.
...
) media originally in a physical, analog or broadcast form into a digital form for portability or later use. Combined with the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
and
file-sharing
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include ...
tools, made unauthorized distribution of copyrighted content (
digital piracy
Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, su ...
) much easier.
History
DRM became a major concern with the growth of the Internet in the 1990s, as piracy crushed CD sales and online video became popular. It peaked in the early 2000s as various countries attempted to respond with legislation and regulations and dissipated in the 2010s as
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
,
streaming services
An over-the-top media service is a streaming media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms, the companies that traditionally act as a controller or distributors of s ...
largely replaced piracy and content providers elaborated next-generation business models.
Early efforts
In 1983, the Software Service System (SSS) devised by the Japanese engineer Ryuichi Moriya was the first example of DRM technology. It was subsequently refined under the name
superdistribution. The SSS was based on encryption, with specialized hardware that controlled decryption and enabled payments to be sent to the copyright holder. The underlying principle was that the physical distribution of encrypted digital products should be completely unrestricted and that users of those products would be encouraged to do so.
An early DRM protection method for computer and
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...
games was when the game would pause and prompt the player to look up a certain page in a booklet or manual that came with the game; if the player lacked access to the material, they would not be able to continue.
An early example of a DRM system is the
Content Scramble System
The Content Scramble System (CSS) is a digital rights management (DRM) and encryption system employed on many commercially produced DVD-Video discs. CSS utilizes a proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm. The system was introduced around 1996 ...
(CSS) employed by the
DVD Forum
The DVD Forum is an international organization composed of hardware, software, media and production companies that use and develop the DVD and formerly HD DVD formats. It was initially known as the DVD Consortium when it was founded in 1995.
H ...
on
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
movies. CSS uses an
encryption algorithm
In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can deci ...
to encrypt content on the DVD disc. Manufacturers of DVD players must license this technology and implement it in their devices so that they can decrypt the content. The CSS license agreement includes restrictions on how the DVD content is played, including what outputs are permitted and how such permitted outputs are made available. This keeps the encryption intact as the content is displayed.
In May 1998, the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...
(DMCA) passed as an amendment to US
copyright law
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
. It had controversial (possibly unintended) implications. Russian programmer
Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested for alleged DMCA infringement after a presentation at
DEF CON
DEF CON (also written as DEFCON, Defcon or DC) is a hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first DEF CON took place in June 1993 and today many attendees at DEF CON include computer security professionals, journalists, lawyer ...
. The DMCA has been cited as chilling to legitimate users; such as security consultants including
Niels Ferguson, who declined to publish vulnerabilities he discovered in
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
's secure-computing scheme due to fear of arrest under DMCA; and blind or visually impaired users of
screen reader
A screen reader is a form of assistive technology (AT) that renders text and image content as speech or braille output. Screen readers are essential to people who are blindness, blind, and are useful to people who are visual impairment, visually ...
s or other
assistive technologies.
In 1999,
Jon Lech Johansen
Jon Lech Johansen (born November 18, 1983 in Harstad, Norway), also known as DVD Jon, is a Norwegian programmer who has worked on reverse engineering data formats. He wrote the DeCSS software, which decodes the Content Scramble System used for ...
released
DeCSS
DeCSS is one of the first free computer programs capable of decrypting content on a commercially produced DVD video disc. Before the release of DeCSS, open source operating systems (such as Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD and Linux) could n ...
, which allowed a CSS-encrypted DVD to play on a computer running
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
, at a time when no compliant DVD player for Linux had yet been created. The legality of DeCSS is questionable: one of its authors was sued, and reproduction of the keys themselves is subject to restrictions as
illegal number
An illegal number is a number that represents information which is illegal to possess, utter, propagate, or otherwise transmit in some legal jurisdiction. Any piece of digital information is representable as a number; consequently, if communicat ...
s.
More modern examples include
ADEPT
An adept is an individual identified as having attained a specific level of knowledge, skill, or aptitude in doctrines relevant to a particular author or organization.
He or she stands out from others with their great abilities. All human quali ...
,
FairPlay
FairPlay is a digital rights management (DRM) technology developed by Apple Inc. It is built into the MP4 multimedia file format as an encrypted AAC audio layer, and was used until April 2009 by the company to protect copyrighted works sold ...
,
Advanced Access Content System
The Advanced Access Content System (AACS) is a standard for content distribution and digital rights management, intended to restrict access to and copying of the post- DVD generation of optical discs. The specification was publicly released in ...
.
The
World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty
The World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty (WIPO Copyright Treaty or WCT) is an international treaty on copyright law adopted by the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1996. It provides addi ...
(WCT) was passed in 1996. The US
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...
(DMCA), was passed in 1998. The European Union enacted the
Information Society Directive
The Information Society Directive (familiarly when first proposed, the Copyright Directive) is a directive of the European Union that was enacted to implement the WIPO Copyright Treaty and to harmonise aspects of copyright law across Europe, ...
. In 2006, the lower house of the French parliament adopted such legislation as part of the controversial
DADVSI
Loi DADVSI (generally pronounced as ''dadsi'') is the abbreviation of the French ''Loi relative au droit d’auteur et aux droits voisins dans la société de l’information'' (in English: "law on authors' rights and related rights in the infor ...
law, but added that protected DRM techniques should be made interoperable, a move which caused widespread controversy in the United States. The
Tribunal de grande instance de Paris
The ''Tribunal judiciaire de Paris'' (abbreviated TJ; in English: ''Judicial Court of Paris''), located at the Judicial Campus of Paris in Batignolles, is the largest court in France by caseload. It replaced the capital's former ''Tribunal de gra ...
concluded in 2006, that the complete blocking of any possibilities of making private copies was an impermissible behaviour under French copyright law.
2000s
The broadcast flag concept was developed by Fox Broadcasting in 2001, and was supported by the
MPAA
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distribu ...
and the U.S.
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
(FCC). A ruling in May 2005 by a
United States courts of appeals
The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal judiciary. The courts of appeals are divided into 11 numbered circuits that cover geographic areas of the United States and hear appeals fr ...
held that the FCC lacked authority to impose it on the US TV industry. It required that all HDTVs obey a stream specification determining whether a stream can be recorded. This could block instances of fair use, such as
time-shifting
In broadcasting, time shifting is the recording of programming to a storage medium to be viewed or listened to after the live broadcasting. Typically, this refers to TV programming but it can also refer to radio shows via podcasts.
In recent year ...
. It achieved more success elsewhere when it was adopted by the
Digital Video Broadcasting Project
Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) o ...
(DVB), a consortium of about 250 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, and regulatory bodies from about 35 countries involved in attempting to develop new digital TV standards.
In January 2001, the Workshop on Digital Rights Management of the
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
was held.
On 22 May 2001, the European Union passed the Information Society Directive, with copyright protections.
In 2003, the
European Committee for Standardization
The European Committee for Standardization (CEN, french: Comité Européen de Normalisation) is a public standards organization whose mission is to foster the economy of the European Single Market and the wider European continent in global tr ...
/Information Society Standardization System (CEN/ISSS) DRM Report was published.
In 2004, the Consultation process of the European Commission, and the DG Internal Market, on the Communication COM(2004)261 by the European Commission on "Management of Copyright and Related Rights" closed.
In 2005, DRM Workshops of
, and the work of the High Level Group on DRM were held.
In 2005,
Sony BMG
Sony BMG Music Entertainment was an American record company owned as a 50–50 joint venture between Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann. The venture's successor, the revived Sony Music, is wholly owned by Sony, following their buyout o ...
installed DRM software on users' computers without clearly notifying the user or requiring confirmation. Among other things, the software included a
rootkit
A rootkit is a collection of computer software, typically malicious, designed to enable access to a computer or an area of its software that is not otherwise allowed (for example, to an unauthorized user) and often masks its existence or the exis ...
, which created
a security vulnerability. When the nature of the software was made public much later, Sony BMG initially minimized the significance of the vulnerabilities, but eventually recalled millions of CDs, and made several attempts to patch the software to remove the rootkit.
Class action lawsuit
A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class action ...
s were filed, which were ultimately settled by agreements to provide affected consumers with a cash payout or album downloads free of DRM.
Microsoft's media player
Zune
Zune is a discontinued line of digital media products and services marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until its discontinuation in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, digital media player software for Windows Per ...
released in 2006 did not support content that used Microsoft's
PlaysForSure
Microsoft PlaysForSure was a certification given by Microsoft to portable devices and content services that had been tested against several hundred compatibility and performance requirements. These requirements include codec support, Digital rig ...
DRM scheme.
Windows Media DRM Windows Media DRM or WMDRM, is a Digital Rights Management service for the Windows Media platform. It is designed to provide delivery of audio or video content over an IP network to a PC or other playback device in such a way that the distributor ca ...
, reads instructions from media files in a rights management language that states what the user may do with the media.
Later versions of Windows Media DRM implemented music subscription services that make downloaded files unplayable after subscriptions are cancelled, along with the ability for a regional lockout.
Tools like
FairUse4WM strip Windows Media of DRM restrictions.
The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property by the British Government from
Andrew Gowers
Andrew Gowers (born 1957) was appointed editor of the ''Financial Times'' in October 2001. He resigned from this post in November 2005 citing "strategic differences". In March 2012 he was appointed Director of External Relations at the Association ...
was published in 2006 with recommendations regarding copyright terms, exceptions, orphaned works, and copyright enforcement.
DVB (
DVB-CPCM) is an updated variant of the broadcast flag. 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
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...
(EFF), "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". The normative sections were approved for publication by the DVB Steering Board, and formalized by
ETSI
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization in the field of information and communications. ETSI supports the development and testing of global technical standard ...
as a formal European Standard (TS 102 825-X) where X refers to the Part number. Nobody has yet stepped forward to provide a
Compliance and Robustness Compliance and Robustness, sometimes abbreviated as C&R, refers to the legal structure or regime underlying a Digital Rights Management (DRM) system. In many cases, the C&R regime for a given DRM is provided by the same company that sells the DRM s ...
regime for the standard, so it is not presently possible to fully implement a system, as no supplier of device certificates has emerged.
In December 2006, the industrial-grade
Advanced Access Content System
The Advanced Access Content System (AACS) is a standard for content distribution and digital rights management, intended to restrict access to and copying of the post- DVD generation of optical discs. The specification was publicly released in ...
(AACS) for
HD DVD
HD DVD (short for High Definition Digital Versatile Disc) is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video. Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to th ...
and
Blu-ray Disc
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and c ...
s, a process key was published by hackers, which enabled unrestricted access to AACS-protected content.
In January 2007,
EMI
EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...
stopped publishing audio CDs with DRM, stating that "the costs of DRM do not measure up to the results." In March, Musicload.de, one of Europe's largest internet 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.
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
made music DRM-free after April 2007 and labeled all music as "DRM-Free" after 2008. Other works sold on iTunes such as apps, audiobooks, movies, and TV shows are protected by DRM.
In October 2007, British rock band
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Greenwood (bass) ...
released ''
In Rainbows
''In Rainbows'' is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was self-released on 10 October 2007 as a pay-what-you-want download, followed by a physical release internationally through XL Recordings and in North America ...
'', for which fans could choose the amount they paid, or download it for free.
A notable DRM failure happened in November 2007, when videos purchased from
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
prior to 2006 became unplayable due to a change to the servers that validate the licenses.
In 2007, the European Parliament supported the EU's direction on copyright protection.
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.
Digital distributor GOG.com
GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt based in Warsaw, Poland. GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through it ...
(formerly Good Old Games) specializes in
PC video game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...
s and has a strict non-DRM policy.
Baen Books
Baen Books () is an American publishing house for science fiction and fantasy. In science fiction, it emphasizes space opera, hard science fiction, and military science fiction. The company was established in 1983 by science fiction publisher an ...
and
O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of an ...
, dropped DRM prior to 2012, when
Tor Books
Tor Books is the primary imprint of Tor Publishing Group (previously Tom Doherty Associates), a publishing company based in New York City. It primarily publishes science fiction and fantasy titles, and is the largest publisher of Chinese scien ...
, a major publisher of science fiction and fantasy books, first sold DRM-free
e-book
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
s.
The
Axmedis
AXMEDIS is a set of European Union digital content standards, initially created as a research project running from 2004 to 2008 partially supported by the European Commission under the Information Society Technologies (IST DG-INFSO) programme of ...
project completed in 2008. It was a European Commission Integrated Project of the FP6, has as its main goal automating content production,
copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media.
Copy protection is most commonly found on ...
, and distribution, to reduce the related costs, and to support DRM at both B2B and B2C areas, harmonizing them.
The
INDICARE project was a dialogue on consumer acceptability of DRM solutions in Europe that completed in 2008.
In mid-2008, the
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
version of ''
Mass Effect
''Mass Effect'' is a military science fiction media franchise created by Casey Hudson, Drew Karpyshyn and Preston Watamaniuk. The franchise depicts a distant future where humanity and several alien civilizations have colonized the known univers ...
'' marked the start of a wave of titles primarily making use of
SecuROM
SecuROM was a CD/DVD copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) product developed by Sony DADC. It aims to prevent unauthorised copying and reverse engineering of software, primarily commercial computer games running on Microsoft Win ...
for DRM and requiring authentication with a server. The use of the DRM scheme in 2008's ''
Spore
In biology, a spore is a unit of sexual or asexual reproduction that may be adapted for dispersal and for survival, often for extended periods of time, in unfavourable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many plants, algae, f ...
'' led to protests, resulting in searches for an unlicensed version. This backlash against the activation limit led ''Spore'' to become the most pirated game in 2008, topping the top 10 list compiled by
TorrentFreak
__NOTOC__
TorrentFreak (TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing, as well as on copyright infringement and digital rights.
The website was started in November 2005 by a Dutchma ...
. However, ''Tweakguides'' concluded that DRM does not appear to increase video game piracy, noting that other games on the list, such as ''
Call of Duty 4
''Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare'' is a 2007 first-person shooter video game developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision. It is the fourth main installment in the ''Call of Duty'' series. The game breaks away from the World War I ...
'' and ''
Assassin's Creed
''Assassin's Creed'' is an open-world, action-adventure, and stealth game franchise published by Ubisoft and developed mainly by its studio Ubisoft Montreal using the game engine Anvil and its more advanced derivatives. Created by Patrice D ...
'', use DRM without limits or online activation. Additionally, other video games that use DRM, such as ''
BioShock
''BioShock'' is a 2007 first-person shooter game developed by 2K Boston (later Irrational Games) and 2K Australia, and published by 2K Games. The first game in the ''BioShock'' series, it was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 pla ...
'', ''
Crysis Warhead
''Crysis Warhead'' is a first-person shooter video game developed by the Hungarian studio Crytek Budapest and published by Electronic Arts. ''Crysis Warhead'' is a stand-alone expansion game and does not require the installation of the original ...
'', and ''Mass Effect'', do not appear on the list.
Many mainstream publishers continued to rely on
online
In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" or ...
DRM throughout the later half of 2008 and early 2009, including
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...
,
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include '' Assassin's Creed'', ''Far Cry'', '' ...
,
Valve
A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fittings ...
, and
Atari
Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...
, ''
The Sims 3'' being a notable exception in the case of Electronic Arts. 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" regarding the claim that DRM was inciting people to use illegal copies. Although Ubisoft has not commented on the results of the "experiment", Tweakguides noted that two
torrents on
Mininova
Mininova was a website offering BitTorrent downloads. Mininova was once one of the largest sites offering torrents of copyrighted material, but in November 2009, following legal action in the Dutch courts, the site operators deleted all torrent ...
had over 23,000 people downloading the game within 24 hours of its release.
In 2009,
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
remotely deleted purchased copies of
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...
's ''
Animal Farm
''Animal Farm'' is a beast fable, in the form of satirical allegorical novella, by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. It tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to crea ...
'' (1945) and ''
Nineteen Eighty-Four
''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also stylised as ''1984'') is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final ...
'' (1949) from customers'
Amazon Kindle
Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store. ...
s after refunding the purchase price. Commentators described these actions as
Orwellian
"Orwellian" is an adjective describing a situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by pro ...
and compared Amazon to
Big Brother from ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. Amazon CEO
Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ''né'' Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former preside ...
then issued a public apology. FSF wrote that this was an example of the excessive power Amazon has to remotely censor content, and called upon Amazon to drop DRM. Amazon then revealed the reason behind its deletion: the e-books in question were unauthorized reproductions of Orwell's works, which were not within the
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work
A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...
and that the company that published and sold on Amazon's service had no right to do so.
2010-
Ubisoft formally announced a return to online authentication on 9 February 2010, through its
Uplay
Ubisoft Connect (formerly Uplay) is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications service developed by Ubisoft to provide an experience similar to the achievements/trophies offered by various other game compa ...
online game platform, starting with ''
Silent Hunter 5'', ''
The Settlers 7'', and ''
Assassin's Creed II
''Assassin's Creed II'' is a 2009 action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montréal and published by Ubisoft. It is the second major installment in the ''Assassin's Creed'' series, and the sequel to 2007's '' Assassin's Creed''. The g ...
''. ''Silent Hunter 5'' was first reported to have been compromised within 24 hours of release, but users of the cracked version soon found out that only early parts of the game were playable. 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. It was 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 II''. 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.
In March 2010, Uplay servers suffered a period of inaccessibility due to a large-scale
DDoS attack
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connec ...
, causing around 5% of game owners to become locked out of playing their game. The company later credited owners of the affected games with a free download, and there has been no further downtime.
In 2011, comedian
Louis C.K.
Louis Alfred Székely (; born September 12, 1967), known professionally as Louis C.K. (), is an American stand-up comedian, screenwriter, actor, and filmmaker. C.K. won three Peabody Awards, three Grammy Awards, six Primetime Emmy Awards, and a ...
released his
concert film
A concert film, or concert movie, is a film that showcases a live performance from the perspective of a concert goer, the subject of which is an extended live performance or concert by either a musician or a stand-up comedian.
Early history
The ...
''
Live at the Beacon Theater
''Live at the Beacon Theater'' is the fourth full-length comedy special/concert film by comedian Louis C.K. The special takes place at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan, New York.
In contrast to his previous specials, which had been produced for ...
'' as an inexpensive (US$5), DRM-free download. The only attempt to deter unlicensed copies was a letter emphasizing the lack of corporate involvement and direct relationship between artist and viewer. The film was a commercial success, turning a profit within 12 hours of its release. The artist suggested that piracy rates were lower than normal as a result, making the release an important case study for the digital marketplace.
In 2012, the
EU Court of Justice ruled in favor of reselling copyrighted games.
In 2012, India implemented digital rights management protection.
[Zakir Thomas, 'Overview of Changes to Indian Copyright Law' ]012 012 may refer to:
* Tyrrell 012, a Formula One racing car
* The dialing code for Pretoria
Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassie ...
17 Journal of Intellectual Property Rights pp 324–334, 332 [Arul George Scaria, 'Does India Need Digital Rights Management Provisions or Better Digital Business Management Strategies?' ]012 012 may refer to:
* Tyrrell 012, a Formula One racing car
* The dialing code for Pretoria
Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassie ...
17 Journal of Intellectual Property Rights pp. 463–477, 465
In 2012,
webcomic
Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books.
Webcomics can be co ...
''
Diesel Sweeties
''Diesel Sweeties'' is a webcomic and former newspaper comic strip written by Richard Stevens III (R Stevens). The comic began in 2000,Rall, Ted (2006). '' Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists'', New York: Nantier, Beall, Minoustchi ...
'' released a DRM-free PDF e-book. He followed this with a DRM-free iBook specifically for the iPad that generated more than 10,000 downloads in three days.
That led Stevens to launch a
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...
project – "ebook stravaganza 3000" – to fund the conversion of 3,000 comics, written over 12 years, into a single "humongous" e-book to be released both for free and through the iBookstore; launched 8 February 2012, with the goal of raising $3,000 in 30 days. The "payment optional" DRM-free model in this case was adopted on Stevens' view that "there is a class of webcomics reader who would prefer to read in large chunks and, even better, would be willing to spend a little money on it."
In February 2012,
Double Fine
Double Fine Productions, Inc. is an American first-party video game developer of Xbox Game Studios based in San Francisco, California. Founded in July 2000 by Tim Schafer shortly after his departure from LucasArts, Double Fine's first two game ...
asked for
crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...
for an upcoming video game, ''
Double Fine Adventure'', on
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...
and offered the game DRM-free for backers. This project exceeded its original goal of $400,000 in 45 days, raising in excess of $2 million.
Crowdfunding acted as a
pre-order
A pre-order is an order placed for an item that has not yet been released. The idea for pre-orders came because people found it hard to get popular items in stores because of their popularity. Companies then had the idea to allow customers to r ...
or alternatively as a
subscription
The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, and ...
. After the success of ''Double Fine Adventure'', many games were crowd-funded and many offered a DRM-free version.
Websitessuch as
library.nu
Library.nu, previously called ebooksclub.org from 2004 to 2007 and gigapedia.com from 2007 to 2010, was a popular linking website. It was accused of copyright infringement and was shut down by court order on February 15, 2012. According to the t ...
(shut down by court order on 15 February 2012), BookFi,
BookFinder
BookFinder.com is a vertical search website that helps readers buy books online. The site's meta-search engine scans the inventories of over 100,000 booksellers located around the world. Among the books from sellers whose inventories are indexed ...
,
Library Genesis
Library Genesis (Libgen) is a file-sharing based shadow library website for scholarly journal articles, academic and general-interest books, images, comics, audiobooks, and magazines. The site enables free access to content that is otherwise p ...
, and
Sci-Huballowed e-book downloading by violating copyright.
As of 2013, other developers, such as
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduat ...
put most of the game logic is on the "side" or taken care of by the servers of the game maker. Blizzard uses this strategy for its game ''
Diablo III
''Diablo III'' is a hack-and-slash action role-playing game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment as the third installment in the Diablo (series), ''Diablo'' franchise. It was released for Microsoft Windows and OS X in May 2012, Play ...
'' and Electronic Arts used this same strategy with their reboot of
''SimCity'', the necessity of which has been questioned.
In 2014, the
EU Court of Justice ruled that circumventing DRM on game devices was legal under some circumstances.
In 2014, digital comic distributor
Comixology
Iconology Inc., d/b/a ComiXology (styled comiXology), is a cloud-based digital distribution platform for comics owned by Amazon, with over 200 million comic downloads . It offers a selection of more than 100,000 comic books, graphic novels, and ...
allowed rights holders to provide the option of DRM-free downloads. Publishers that allow this include
Dynamite Entertainment
Dynamite Entertainment is an American comic book publisher founded by Nick Barrucci in 2004 at Mount Laurel, New Jersey. It is best known as the owners of '' The Boys'' franchise across several IP medias. Dynamite primarily publishes adaptation ...
,
Image Comics
Image Comics is an American comic book publisher and is the third largest comic book and graphic novel publisher in the industry in both unit and market share. It was founded in 1992 by several high-profile illustrators as a venue for creator-ow ...
,
Thrillbent,
Top Shelf Productions
Top Shelf Productions is an American publishing company founded in 1997, originally owned and operated by Chris Staros and Brett Warnock and a small staff. Now an imprint of IDW Publishing, Top Shelf is based in Marietta, Georgia.
Top Shelf pub ...
, and
Zenescope Entertainment
Zenescope Entertainment is a comic book and graphic novel publisher headquartered in Horsham, Pennsylvania, United States, co-founded by Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco in 2005. Zenescope publishes full-color action, fantasy and horror titles.
Unde ...
.
Technologies
Verification
Product keys
A
product key
A product key, also known as a software key, serial key or activation key, is a specific software-based key for a computer program. It certifies that the copy of the program is original.
Product keys consist of a series of numbers and/or letters ...
, typically an alphanumerical string, can represent a license to a particular copy of software. During the installation process or software launch, the user is asked to enter the key; if the key is valid (typically via internal algorithms), the key is accepted, and the user can continue. Product keys can be combined with other DRM practices (such as online "activation"), to prevent
cracking the software to run without a product key, or using a
keygen
A key generator (key-gen) is a computer program that generates a product licensing key, such as a serial number, necessary to activate for use of a software application. Keygens may be legitimately distributed by software manufacturers for lice ...
to generate acceptable keys.
Activation limits
DRM can limit the number of devices on which a legal user can install content. This restriction typically support 3-5 devices. This affects users who have more devices than the limit. Some allow one device to be replaced with another. Without this software and hardware upgrades may require an additional purchase.
Persistent online DRM
Always-on DRM checks and rechecks authorization while the content is in use by interacting with a server operated by the copyright holder. In some cases, only part of the content is actually installed, while the rest is downloaded dynamically during use.
Encryption
Encryption alters content in a way that means that it can be used without first decrypting it. Encryption can ensure that other restriction measures cannot be bypassed by modifying software, so DRM systems typically rely on encryption in addition to other techniques.
Copy restriction
Microsoft PlayReady prevents illicit copying of multimedia and other files.
Restrictions can be applied to
electronic books
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alth ...
and documents, in order to prevent copying, printing, forwarding, and creating backup copies. This is common for both
e-publishers and enterprise
Information Rights Management
Information rights management (IRM) is a subset of digital rights management (DRM), technologies that protect sensitive information from unauthorized access. It is sometimes referred to as E-DRM or Enterprise Digital Rights Management. This can ca ...
. It typically integrates with
content management
Content management (CM) is a set of processes and technologies that supports the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. When stored and accessed via computers, this information may be more specifically referre ...
system software.
While some commentators claim that DRM complicates e-book publishing, it has been used by organizations such as the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
in its
secure electronic delivery service Secure Electronic Delivery (SED) is a service created in 2003 and provided by the British Library Document Supply Service (BLDSS). Its purpose is to enable faster delivery of digital materials as encrypted, copyright-compliant PDF Documents, to ...
to permit worldwide access to rare documents which, for legal reasons, were previously only available to authorized individuals actually visiting the Library's document centre.
Four main e-book DRM schemes are in common use, from
Adobe
Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...
, Amazon,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
, and the Marlin Trust Management Organization (MTMO).
* Adobe's DRM is applied to EPUBs and PDFs, and can be read by several third-party e-book readers, as well as
Adobe Digital Editions
Adobe Digital Editions (abbreviated ADE) is an e-book reader software program from Adobe Systems, built initially (1.x version) using Adobe Flash. It is used for acquiring, managing, and reading e-books, digital newspapers, and other digital p ...
(ADE) software.
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 U. ...
uses DRM technology provided by Adobe, applied to EPUBs and the older
PDB (Palm OS)
PDB is a container format for record databases in Palm OS, Garnet OS and Access Linux Platform. Its structure is similar to PRC resource databases.N. Rhodes, J. McKeehan. Palm OS Programming, Second Edition, O'Reilly, 2001, The PalmDOC eBook ...
format e-books.
* Amazon's DRM is an adaption of the original
Mobipocket
Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the .mobi e-book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and desktop operating systems.
The Mobipoc ...
encryption and is applied to Amazon's .azw4, KF8, and Mobipocket format e-books. Topaz format e-books have their own encryption system.
* Apple's
FairPlay
FairPlay is a digital rights management (DRM) technology developed by Apple Inc. It is built into the MP4 multimedia file format as an encrypted AAC audio layer, and was used until April 2009 by the company to protect copyrighted works sold ...
DRM is applied to EPUBs and can be read only by Apple's
iBooks iBooks may refer to:
* iBooks, the former name of Apple Books.
* ibooks Inc., a book and comics publishing company founded by Byron Preiss
Byron Preiss (April 11, 1953 – July 9, 2005)[iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...]
devices and
Mac OS
Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc.
In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...
computers.
* The Marlin DRM was developed and is maintained by open industry group Marlin Developer Community (MDC) and is licensed by MTMO. (Marlin was founded by
Intertrust, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, and Sony.) Online textbook publisher
Kno
Kno, Inc. was a software company that worked with publishers to offer digital textbooks and other educational materials. In November 2013, after raising nearly $100 million in venture capital, the company was acquired by Intel. The website was ...
uses Marlin to protect EPUB books. These books can be read on the Kno App for iOS and
Android.
Runtime restrictions
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
contains a DRM system called
Protected Media Path
The Protected Media Path is a set of technologies creating a "Protected Environment," first included in Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, that is used to enforce digital rights management (or DRM) protections on content.
Its subsets are ...
, which contains 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
Monitor or monitor may refer to:
Places
* Monitor, Alberta
* Monitor, Indiana, town in the United States
* Monitor, Kentucky
* Monitor, Oregon, unincorporated community in the United States
* Monitor, Washington
* Monitor, Logan County, West ...
or the
graphics card
A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer moni ...
, which makes it more difficult to make unauthorized recordings.
Bohemia Interactive
Bohemia Interactive a.s. is a Czech video game developer and publisher based in Prague. The company focuses on creating military simulation games such as '' Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis'' and the '' ARMA'' series. It is also known for ...
have used a form of technology since ''
Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis'', wherein if the game copy is suspected of being unauthorized, annoyances like guns losing their accuracy or the players turning into a bird are introduced.
Croteam
Croteam is a Croatian video game developer based in Zagreb. The company was established by Davor Hunski, Damir Perović, Roman Ribarić and Dean Sekulić, four former classmates, in late August 1992. Croteam is best known for ''Serious Sam'', a ...
's ''
Serious Sam 3: BFE'' causes a special invincible foe in the game to appear and constantly attack the player until they are killed.
Regional lockout
Regional lockout (or region coding) prevents the use of a certain product or service, except in a specific region or territory. Lockout may be enforced through physical means, through technological means such as inspecting the user's
IP address
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...
or using an identifying code, or through unintentional means introduced by devices that support only region-specific technologies (such as
video formats
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...
, i.e.,
NTSC
The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...
and
PAL
Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...
).
Tracking
Watermarks
Digital watermarks can be
steganographically embedded within audio or video data. They can be used for recording the copyright owner, the distribution chain or identifying the purchaser. They are not complete DRM mechanisms in their own right, but are used as part of a system for copyright enforcement, such as helping provide evidence for legal purposes, rather than enforcing restrictions.
Some audio/video editing programs may distort, delete, or otherwise interfere with watermarks. Signal/modulator-carrier
chromatography
In chemical analysis, chromatography is a laboratory technique for the separation of a mixture into its components. The mixture is dissolved in a fluid solvent (gas or liquid) called the ''mobile phase'', which carries it through a system (a ...
may separate watermarks from the recording or detect them as glitches. Additionally, comparison of two separately obtained copies of audio using basic algorithms can reveal watermarks.
Metadata
Sometimes,
metadata
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
is included in purchased media which records information such as the purchaser's name, account information, or email address. Also included may be the file's publisher, author, creation date, download date, and various notes. This information is not embedded in the content, as a watermark is. It is kept separate from the content, but within the file or stream.
As an example, metadata is used in media purchased from iTunes for DRM-free as well as DRM-restricted content. This information is included as
MPEG
The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...
standard metadata.
Hardware
US
Cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...
set-top box
A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...
es require a specific piece of hardware to operate. The
CableCard
CableCARD is a special-use PC Card device that allows consumers in the United States to view and record digital cable television channels on digital video recorders, personal computers and television sets on equipment such as a set-top box not pr ...
standard is used to restrict content to services to which the customer is subscribed. Content has an embedded
broadcast flag that the card examines to decide whether the content can be viewed by a specific user.
Implementations
*
Analog Protection System The Analog Protection System (APS), also known as Copyguard or Macrovision, is a VHS and DVD copy protection system originally developed by Macrovision. Video tapes copied from DVDs encoded with APS become garbled and unwatchable. The process work ...
(Macrovision)
*
DCS Copy Protection
EchoStar Corporation is an American company, a worldwide provider of satellite communication and Internet services through its Hughes Network Systems and EchoStar Satellite Services business segments. EchoStar is based out of unincorporated Arapa ...
*
B-CAS
B-CAS (BS Conditional Access Systems Co., Ltd.) is a vendor and operator of the ISDB CAS system in Japan, largely owned by the public broadcaster NHK with some other electronics companies and broadcasters airing in BSAT. It also refers to the rec ...
*
CableCARD
CableCARD is a special-use PC Card device that allows consumers in the United States to view and record digital cable television channels on digital video recorders, personal computers and television sets on equipment such as a set-top box not pr ...
*
Broadcast flag
*
DVB-CPCM
*
Copy Control Information
*
ISDB#Copy-protection technology
*
FairPlay
FairPlay is a digital rights management (DRM) technology developed by Apple Inc. It is built into the MP4 multimedia file format as an encrypted AAC audio layer, and was used until April 2009 by the company to protect copyrighted works sold ...
*
Sony rootkit
*
Content Scramble System
The Content Scramble System (CSS) is a digital rights management (DRM) and encryption system employed on many commercially produced DVD-Video discs. CSS utilizes a proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm. The system was introduced around 1996 ...
(CSS)
*
ARccOS protection
*
Advanced Access Content System
The Advanced Access Content System (AACS) is a standard for content distribution and digital rights management, intended to restrict access to and copying of the post- DVD generation of optical discs. The specification was publicly released in ...
(AACS)
*
Content Protection for Recordable Media
Content Protection for Recordable Media and Pre-Recorded Media (CPRM / CPPM) is a mechanism for controlling the copying, moving, and deletion of digital media on a host device, such as a personal computer, or other player. It is a form of digi ...
(CPRM)
*
Digital Transmission Content Protection Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP) is a digital rights management (DRM) technology that restricts digital home technologies including DVD players and televisions by encrypting interconnections between devices. This permits the distribut ...
*
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across connections. Types of connections include DisplayPort ...
(HDCP)
*
Protected Media Path
The Protected Media Path is a set of technologies creating a "Protected Environment," first included in Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, that is used to enforce digital rights management (or DRM) protections on content.
Its subsets are ...
*
Trusted Platform Module#Uses
*
Intel Management Engine#Design
*
Cinavia
Cinavia, originally called Verance Copy Management System for Audiovisual Content (VCMS/AV), is an analog watermarking and steganography system under development by Verance since 1999, and released in 2010. In conjunction with the existing Adv ...
*
HTML5 video
The HTML5 specification introduced the video element for the purpose of playing videos, partially replacing the object element. HTML5 video is intended by its creators to become the new standard way to show video on the web, instead of the previo ...
Encrypted Media Extensions
Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) is a W3C specification for providing a communication channel between web browsers and the Content Decryption Module (CDM) software which implements digital rights management (DRM). This allows the use of HTML5 vi ...
(HTML5 EME, often implemented with
Widevine
Widevine is a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology from Google used by the Chromium and Firefox web browsers (including some derivatives), Android MediaDRM, Android TV, and other consumer electronics devices. Widevine technolog ...
)
*
Denuvo
Denuvo Anti-Tamper is an anti-tamper technology and digital rights management (DRM) system developed by Austrian software company Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH, a subsidiary of Irdeto. The company also developed an anti-cheat counterpart.
Hi ...
*
StarForce
The Starforce is a supervillain team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Its first appearance was in the comic ''The Avengers (comic book), Avengers'' #346 released in 1992, as part of the "Operation: Galactic Storm" st ...
*
SafeDisc
''SafeDisc'' is a copy protection program for Microsoft Windows applications and games distributed on optical disc. Created by Macrovision Corporation, it was aimed to hinder unauthorized disc duplication. The program was first introduced in 19 ...
*
SecuROM
SecuROM was a CD/DVD copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) product developed by Sony DADC. It aims to prevent unauthorised copying and reverse engineering of software, primarily commercial computer games running on Microsoft Win ...
In addition, platforms such as
Steam
Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...
may include DRM mechanisms. Most of the mechanisms above are
copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media.
Copy protection is most commonly found on ...
mechanisms rather than DRM mechanisms per se.
Laws
The
World Intellectual Property Organization
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; french: link=no, Organisation mondiale de la propriété intellectuelle (OMPI)) is one of the list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, 15 specialized agencies of the United Nation ...
supports the
World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty
The World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty (WIPO Copyright Treaty or WCT) is an international treaty on copyright law adopted by the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1996. It provides addi ...
(WCT) which requires nations to enact laws against DRM circumvention. The WIPO Internet Treaties do not mandate criminal sanctions, merely requiring "effective legal remedies".
China
China's Interim Regulations ostensibly regulate digital content. China claims to protect intellectual property rights, although the
World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. With effective cooperation
in the United Nations System, governments use the organization to establish, revise, and e ...
(WTO) "determined that China's copyright laws do not provide the same efficacy to non-Chinese nationals as they do to Chinese citizens, as required by the Berne Convention" and that "China's copyright laws do not provide enforcement procedures so as to permit effective action against any act of infringement of intellectual property rights".
European Union
The EU operates under its Information Society Directive, its WIPO implementation. The European Parliament then directed member states to outlaw violation of international copyright for commercial purposes. Punishments range from fines to imprisonment. It excluded patent rights and copying for personal, non-commercial purposes. Copyrighted games can be resold.
Circumventing DRM on game devices is legal under some circumstances; protections cover only technological measures the interfere with prohibited actions.
India
India is not a signatory to
WIPO Copyright Treaty
The World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty (WIPO Copyright Treaty or WCT) is an international treaty on copyright law adopted by the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1996. It provides addi ...
or the
WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty
The WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (or WPPT) is an international treaty signed by the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization and was adopted in Geneva on 20 December 1996. It came into effect on 20 May 2002. As of ...
. Its
Copyright Act provides protections for digital content, criminalizing circumvention of technical protections and distribution of illicit copies. Punishment includes prison time. Fair use is not explicitly addressed.
Israel
Israel is not a signatory to the WIPO Copyright Treaty. Israeli law does not expressly prohibit the circumvention of technological protection measures.
United States
US protections are governed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It criminalizes the production and dissemination of technology that lets users circumvent copy-restrictions. Reverse engineering is expressly permitted, providing a
safe harbor where circumvention is necessary to interoperate with other software.
Open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...
that decrypts protected content is not prohibited per se. Decryption done for the purpose of achieving interoperability of open source operating systems with proprietary systems is protected. Dissemination of such software for the purpose of violating or encouraging others to violate copyrights is prohibited.
DMCA has been largely ineffective. Cirumvention software is 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. DMCA contains an exception for research, although the exception is subject to qualifiers that created uncertainty in that community.
Cryptanalytic research may violate the DMCA, although this is unresolved.
Notable lawsuits
* ''
DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. v. Bunner
''DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. v. Bunner'' was a lawsuit that was filed by the DVD Copy Control Association ("DVD CCA") in California, accusing Andrew Bunner and several others of misappropriation of trade secrets under California's implem ...
''
* ''
DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. v. Kaleidescape, Inc.''
* ''
RealNetworks, Inc. v. DVD Copy Control Association, Inc.
''RealNetworks, Inc. v. DVD Copy Control Association, Inc.'', 641 F. Supp. 2d 913 (2009), is a United States District Court case involving RealNetworks, the movie studios and DVD Copy Control Association regarding the Digital Millennium Copyri ...
''
* ''
Universal v. Reimerdes
''Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley'' (originally known as ''Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes'')'','' 273 F.3d 429 (2nd Cir., 2001), was a court ruling at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.''Universal City S ...
''
Opposition
DRM faces widespread opposition.
John Walker and
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...
are notable critics. Stallman claimed that using the word "rights" is misleading and suggests that the word "restrictions", as in "Digital Restrictions Management", replace it.
This terminology was adopted by other writers and critics.
Other prominent critics include
Ross Anderson, who heads a British organization that opposes DRM and similar efforts in the UK and elsewhere, and
Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow (; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog ''Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of ...
.
EFF
EFF or eff may refer to:
Politics
* Economic Freedom Fighters, a South African communist political party
* Economic Freedom Fund, an American political organization
* Election Fighting Fund, a British suffragist organization supporting the ear ...
and organizations such as
FreeCulture.org are opposed to DRM. The
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a non-profit organisation based in Munich, Germany, dedicated to establishing a free market in information technology, by the removal of barriers to competition. The FFII played a ke ...
criticized DRM's effect as a
trade barrier
Trade barriers are government-induced restrictions on international trade. According to the theory of comparative advantage, trade barriers are detrimental to the world economy and decrease overall economic efficiency.
Most trade barriers work o ...
from a
free market
In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any o ...
perspective.
Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Cente ...
argues that digital copy prevention is futile: "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." He described trying to make digital files uncopyable as like "trying to make water not wet".
The creators of ''StarForce'' stated that "The purpose of copy protection is not making the game uncrackable – it is impossible."
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
spoke about DRM at 2006
CES, saying that DRM causes problems for legitimate consumers.
![DRM protest Boston DefectiveByDesign](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/DRM_protest_Boston_DefectiveByDesign.jpg)
The Norwegian consumer rights organization "Forbrukerrådet" complained to Apple in 2007 about the company's use of DRM, accusing it of unlawfully restricting users' access to their music and videos, and of using
EULA
An end-user license agreement or EULA () is a legal contract between a software supplier and a customer or end-user, generally made available to the customer via a retailer acting as an intermediary. A EULA specifies in detail the rights and restr ...
s that conflict with Norwegian consumer legislation. The complaint was supported by consumers'
ombudsmen
An ombudsman (, also ,), ombud, ombuds, ombudswoman, ombudsperson or public advocate is an official who is usually appointed by the government or by parliament (usually with a significant degree of independence) to investigate complaints and at ...
in Sweden and Denmark, and was reviewed in the EU in 2014. The United States
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction ov ...
held hearings in March 2009, to review disclosure of DRM limitations to customers' use of media products.
Valve
A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fittings ...
president
Gabe Newell
Gabe Logan Newell (born November 3, 1962), nicknamed Gaben, is an American businessman and the president of the video game company Valve.
Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He attended Harvard University in the early ...
stated, "most DRM strategies are just dumb" because they only decrease the value of a game in the consumer's eyes. Newell suggested that the goal should instead be "
reatinggreater value for customers through service value". Valve operates
Steam
Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...
, an online store for
PC game
A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-deter ...
s, as well as a
social networking service
A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...
and a DRM platform.
At the 2012
Game Developers Conference
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tutori ...
, the CEO of
CD Projekt Red
CD Projekt S.A. () is a Polish video game developer, publisher and distributor based in Warsaw, founded in May 1994 by Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński. Iwiński and Kiciński were video game retailers before they founded the company, whi ...
, Marcin Iwinski, announced that the company would not use DRM. Iwinski stated of DRM, "It's just over-complicating things...the game....is cracked in two hours." Iwinski added "DRM does not protect your game. If there are examples that it does, then people maybe should consider it, but then there are complications with legit users."
The
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...
and the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...
opposed DRM, naming
AACS as a technology "most likely to fail" in an issue of
IEEE Spectrum
''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. The magazine contains peer-revie ...
.
Public licenses
The
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...
version 3, as released by the
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...
, has a provision that "strips" DRM of its legal value, so people can break the DRM on GPL software without breaking laws such as the
DMCA
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...
. In May 2006, FSF launched a "
Defective by Design
Defective by Design (DBD) is an anti-DRM initiative by the Free Software Foundation. Digital rights management (DRM) technology restricts users' ability to freely use their purchased movies, music, literature, software, and hardware in ways the ...
" campaign against DRM.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
provides licensing options that encourage creators to work without the use of DRM. Creative Commons licenses have anti-DRM clauses, making the use of DRM by a licensee a breach of the licenses' Baseline Rights.
DRM-free works
![DRM-free label](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/DRM-free_label.en.svg)
Many publishers and artists label their works "DRM-free". Major companies that have done so include Apple,
Comixology
Iconology Inc., d/b/a ComiXology (styled comiXology), is a cloud-based digital distribution platform for comics owned by Amazon, with over 200 million comic downloads . It offers a selection of more than 100,000 comic books, graphic novels, and ...
,
GOG.com
GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt based in Warsaw, Poland. GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through it ...
,
Tor Books
Tor Books is the primary imprint of Tor Publishing Group (previously Tom Doherty Associates), a publishing company based in New York City. It primarily publishes science fiction and fantasy titles, and is the largest publisher of Chinese scien ...
and
Vimeo on Demand
Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software as ...
.
Shortcomings
Availability
Many DRM systems require online authentication. Whenever the server goes down, or a territory experiences an Internet outage, it locks out people from registering or using the material. This is especially true for products that require a persistent online connection, where, for example, a successful
DDoS attack
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connec ...
on the server essentially makes the material unusable.
Usability
Compact disc
The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then rele ...
s (CDs) with DRM schemes are not standards-compliant, and are labeled
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...
s. CD-ROMs cannot be played on all
CD player
A CD player is an electronic device that plays audio compact discs, which are a digital optical disc data storage format. CD players were first sold to consumers in 1982. CDs typically contain recordings of audio material such as music or aud ...
s or personal computers.
Performance
Certain DRM systems have been associated with reduced performance: some games implementing
Denuvo Anti-Tamper
Denuvo Anti-Tamper is an anti-tamper technology and digital rights management (DRM) system developed by Austrian software company Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH, a subsidiary of Irdeto. The company also developed an anti-cheat counterpart.
H ...
performed better without DRM. However, in March 2018, ''
PC Gamer
''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...
'' tested ''
Final Fantasy XV
is an action role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix. The fifteenth main installment of the ''Final Fantasy'' series, it was released for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2016, Microsoft Windows in 2018, and as a launch title ...
'' for the performance effects of
Denuvo
Denuvo Anti-Tamper is an anti-tamper technology and digital rights management (DRM) system developed by Austrian software company Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH, a subsidiary of Irdeto. The company also developed an anti-cheat counterpart.
Hi ...
, which was found to cause no negative gameplay impact despite a little increase in loading time.
Robustness
DRM copy-prevention schemes can never be wholly secure since the logic needed to decrypt the content is present either in software or hardware and implicitly can be hacked. An attacker can extract this information, decrypt and copy the content, bypassing the DRM.
Satellite and cable systems distribute their content widely and rely on hardware DRM systems. Such systems can be hacked by reverse engineering the protection scheme.
Analog hole
Audio and visual material (excluding interactive materials, ''e.g.'', video games) are subject to the
analog hole
The analog hole (also known as the analog loophole or analog gap) is a perceived fundamental and inevitable vulnerability in copy protection schemes for noninteractive works in digital formats which can be exploited to duplicate copy-protected wo ...
, namely that in order to view the material, the digital signal must be turned into an analog signal. Post-conversion, the material can be then be copied and reconverted to a digital format.
The analog hole cannot be filled without externally imposed restrictions, such as legal regulations, because the vulnerability is inherent to all analog presentation. The conversion from digital to analog and back reduces recording quality. The
HDCP
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across connections. Types of connections include DisplayPort ...
attempt to plug the analog hole was largely ineffective.
Consumer rights
Ownership restrictions
DRM opponents argue that it violates
private property
Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property and personal property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or ...
rights and restricts a range of normal and legal user activities. A DRM component such as that found on a
digital audio player
A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...
restricts how it acts with regard to certain content, overriding user's wishes (for example, preventing the user from copying a copyrighted song to
CD as part of a compilation). Doctorow described this as "the right to make up your own copyright laws".
Windows Vista disabled or degraded content play that used a Protected Media Path. DRM restricts the right to make personal copies, provisions lend copies to friends, provisions for service discontinuance, hardware agnosticism, software and operating system agnosticism, lending library use, customer protections against contract amendments by the publisher, and whether content can pass to the owner's heirs.
Obsolescence
When standards and formats change, DRM-restricted content may become obsolete.
When a company undergoes business changes or bankruptcy, its previous services may become unavailable. Examples include MSN Music, Yahoo! Music Store, Adobe Content Server 3 for Adobe PDF, and Acetrax Video on Demand.
Piracy
DRM laws are widely flouted: according to Australia Official Music Chart Survey, copyright infringements from all causes are practised by millions of people. According to the EFF, "in an effort to attract customers, these music services try to obscure the restrictions they impose on you with clever marketing."
Economic implication
Trade-offs between control and sales
Jeff Raikes
Jeffrey Scott Raikes (born May 29, 1958) is the co-founder of the Raikes Foundation. He retired from his role as the chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2014. He serves on the boards of Giving Tech Labs, Hudl, Cos ...
, ex-president of the Microsoft Business Division, stated: "If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else". An analogous argument was made in an early paper by Kathleen Conner and Richard Rummelt. A subsequent study of digital rights management for e-books by Gal Oestreicher-Singer and
Arun Sundararajan
Arun Sundararajan (Tamil language, Tamil: அருண் சுந்தர்ராஜன்) (born in the United Kingdom) is the NEC Faculty Fellow, Professor of Technology, Operations, and Statistics and a Doctoral Coordinator at the St ...
showed that relaxing some forms of DRM can be beneficial to rights holders because the losses from piracy are outweighed by the increase in value to legal buyers. Even if DRM were unbreakable, pirates still might not be willing to purchase, so sales might not increase.
Piracy can be beneficial to some content providers by increase consumer awareness, spreading and popularizing content. This can also increase revenues via other media, such as live performances.
Mathematical models suggest that DRM schemes can fail to do their job on multiple levels. The biggest failure is that the burden that DRM poses on a legitimate customer reduces the customer's willingness to buy. An ideal DRM would not inconvenience legal buyers. The mathematical models are strictly applicable to the music industry.
Alternatives
Several business models offer DRM alternatives.
[Committee on Intellectual Property Rights in the Emerging Information Infrastructure, National Research Council. (2000) "The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age." 3 May 2011. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9601#toc ]
Subscription
Streaming services have created profitable business models by signing users to monthly subscriptions in return for unlimited content. This model has worked for music (such as
Spotify
Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...
,
Apple Music
Apple Music is a music, audio and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing playlists. The service also includes the Internet radio stations Apple M ...
, etc.) and video (such as
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
,
Disney+
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment
Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience or gives pleasure and deligh ...
,
Hulu
Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television serie ...
, etc.)
"Easy and cheap"
Accessing pirated copy can be illegal and possibly inconvenient. Businesses that charge acceptable fees can attract customers. The first business model that dissuades illegal file sharing is to make legal content downloading easy and cheap. Pirate websites are often host to
malware
Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depri ...
which
attach themselves to the files. If content is provided on legitimate sites and is reasonably priced, consumers are more likely to purchase media legally.
Crowdfunding or pre-order
Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...
has been used as a publishing model for digital content.
Promotion for traditional products
Many artists give away individual tracks to create awareness for a subsequent album.
Artistic Freedom Voucher
The Artistic Freedom Voucher (AFV) introduced by
Dean Baker
Dean Baker (born July 13, 1958) is an American macroeconomist who co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) with Mark Weisbrot. Baker has been credited as one of the first economists to have identified the 2007–08 United Sta ...
is a way for consumers to support "creative and artistic work". In this system, each consumer receives 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 would be allowed to obtain music for a certain amount of time easily and the consumer would decide which artists receive the $100. The money can either be given to one artist or to many, the distribution is up to the consumer.
[Baker, Dean. (2003). "The Artistic Freedom Voucher: An Internet Age Alternative to Copyrights." Pg. 2–8. Web. 3 May. 2011. http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/ip_2003_11.pdf ]
See also
*
3D printed firearm
*
Anti-tamper software
Anti-tamper software is software which makes it harder for an attacker to modify it. The measures involved can be passive such as obfuscation to make reverse engineering difficult or active tamper-detection techniques which aim to make a program ...
*
Closed platform
A closed platform, walled garden, or closed ecosystem is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and/or media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applicants or content. This ...
*
Digital asset management
Digital asset management (DAM) and the implementation of its use as a computer application is required in the collection of digital assets to ensure that the owner, and possibly their delegates, can perform operations on the data files.
Termi ...
*
Hardware restrictions
A hardware restriction (sometimes called hardware DRM) is low-level protection enforced by electronic components. The hardware restriction scheme may protect against physical or malware attacks or complement a digital rights management system imp ...
*
License manager
A software license manager is a software management tool used by Independent software vendors or by end-user organizations to control where and how software products are able to run. License managers protect software vendors from losses due to ...
*
ODRL
*
Software metering
Software metering refers to several areas:
*Tracking and maintaining software licenses. One needs to make sure that only the allowed number of licenses are in use, and at the same time, that there are enough licenses for everyone using it. This c ...
*
Software protection dongle
A software protection dongle (commonly known as a dongle or key) is an electronic copy protection and content protection device. When connected to a computer or other electronics, they unlock software functionality or decode content. The hardware ...
*
Secure Digital Music Initiative
*
Trusted Computing
Trusted Computing (TC) is a technology developed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group. The term is taken from the field of trusted systems and has a specialized meaning that is distinct from the field of Confidential Computing. The core ide ...
References
Further reading
*
Lawrence Lessig
Lester Lawrence Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard ...
's ''
Free Culture
The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content or Free content, open content without compensation to, or the consent of, the work's origin ...
'', published by
Basic Books
Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1950 and located in New York, now an imprint of Hachette Book Group. It publishes books in the fields of psychology, philosophy, economics, science, politics, sociology, current affairs, and history.
H ...
in 2004, is available fo
free download in PDF format. The book is a legal and social history of copyright. Lessig is well known, in part, for arguing landmark cases on copyright law. A Professor of Law at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, 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
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, in p ...
) 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 th
INDICARE research and dialogue project* Eberhard Becker,
Willms Buhse
Willms Buhse (born 3 November 1970 in Langenhagen, Germany) is a German entrepreneur, author, speaker and consultant based in Hamburg. His work focuses on digital leadership and digital transformation, covering also the people-centric aspects o ...
, 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
Arun Sundararajan (Tamil language, Tamil: அருண் சுந்தர்ராஜன்) (born in the United Kingdom) is the NEC Faculty Fellow, Professor of Technology, Operations, and Statistics and a Doctoral Coordinator at the St ...
's 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.
* ''
The Pig and the Box
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
'', 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 Founded in 1998, the same year as MP3.com, MP3 Newswire is the oldest active news site devoted to digital media technology. Notable for its series of essays that chronicled the rise of digital music and the Internet’s acrimonious relationship wit ...
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 a
Technological Accommodation of Conflicts between Freedom of Expression and DRM: The First Empirical Assessment (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).
External links
BBC News TechnologyQ&A: What is DRM?
Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networksby
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...
* from Microsoft
Microsoft Research DRM talk by Cory Doctorow
iTunes, DRM and competition lawby Reckon LLP
* 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
Article investigating the effects of DRM and piracy on the video game industry
DRM.infoInformation about DRM by
Chaos Computer Club
The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is Europe's largest association of hackers with 7,700 registered members. Founded in 1981, the association is incorporated as an '' eingetragener Verein'' in Germany, with local chapters (called ''Erfa-Kreise'') i ...
,
Defective by design
Defective by Design (DBD) is an anti-DRM initiative by the Free Software Foundation. Digital rights management (DRM) technology restricts users' ability to freely use their purchased movies, music, literature, software, and hardware in ways the ...
,
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...
,
Free Software Foundation Europe
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is an ''eingetragener Verein'' (registered voluntary association) under German law. It was founded in 2001 to support all aspects of the free software movement in Europe, with registered chapters in seve ...
, and other organisations.
{{Authority control
Copyright law
Cryptography law
Television terminology