Digital Rights Management: What you can and cannot do with purchased media.

So, what exactly is Digital Rights Management?

According to BBC news, digital rights management is “a class of technologies that allow rights owners to set and enforce terms by which people use their intellectual property.” This means that people who hold rights can set limits and rules that have to be followed by the buyers and users of their products. The most common rights holders include film and music industries, which makes sense because of the popularity of these industries. The most frequent use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) is restricting the copying of a product. This makes it harder for users to obtain products for free without paying for a service. Users actually have to purchase the product or share it on a peer to peer file sharing network for it to be safe, legal, and on board with DRM.

How does Digital Rights Management work?

DRM works quite simply in two parts. First, it uses encryption which protects the media content itself. Second, it requires an authentication system which allows only authorized users to have access to the encrypted files. If an unauthorized user tries to gain access to the files, the DRM mixes the data making it unidentifiable to the user. Once these files are properly accessed by users with the proper information, these files can still be shared illegally. However, a user without the correct access code cannot fully access the file and the file will more than likely not be able to be read by, for example, by the MP3 format. This keeps these files save and virus free.

What does the DRM mean to my downloads?

DRM for me, means that I can file share music using peer to peer services and know that my music is going to be safe and virus free. Hopefully, I can find exactly the music I am looking for, relatively easy, with confidence that it is not going to harm my computer or device that I am downloading it to. I think that this is a smart idea and a way for users to have to pay for the high quality, legit music. Most of the time, downloads that are obtained illegally are low quality and come with the risk of infecting your computer. Using p2p services also allows me to share a larger variety of music so that I personally do not have to spend tons of money buying music but it is more spread out.