Digital Rights Management (DRM)
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a way to use software, and related means, to control the use of digital content and devices after sale. First generation DRM software was used to control copying, second generation DRM is used to control executing, viewing, copying, printing and altering of works or devices. The term is also sometimes referred to as copy protection, copy prevention, and copy control.
Digital locks placed in accordance with DRM policies can also restrict users from exercising their legal rights under copyright law, such as backing up copies of CDs or DVDs, lending materials out through a library, accessing works in the public domain, or using copyrighted materials for research and education under the US fair use laws.
Definition According to Defective By Design
source: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm_digital_restrictions_management
Digital Restrictions Management is the practice of imposing technological restrictions that control what users can do with digital media. When a program is designed to prevent you from copying or sharing a song, reading an ebook on another device, or playing a single-player game without an Internet connection, you are being restricted by DRM. In other words, DRM creates a damaged good; it prevents you from doing what would be possible without it. This concentrates control over production and distribution of media, giving DRM peddlers the power to carry out massive digital book burnings and conduct large scale surveillance over people's media viewing habits.
If we want to avoid a future in which our devices serve as an apparatus to monitor and control our interaction with digital media, we must fight to retain control of our media and software.
Definition According to Electronic Frontier Foundation
source: https://www.eff.org/issues/drm
Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies attempt to control what you can and can't do with the media and hardware you've purchased.
- Bought an ebook from Amazon but can't read it on your ebook reader of choice? That's DRM.
- Bought a video game but can't play it today because the manufacturer's "authentication servers" are offline? That's DRM.
- Bought a smartphone but can't use the applications or the service provider you want on it? That's DRM.
- Bought a DVD or Blu-Ray but can't copy the video onto your portable media player? That's DRM.
Corporations claim that DRM is necessary to fight copyright infringement online and keep consumers safe from viruses. But there's no evidence that DRM helps fight either of those. Instead DRM helps big business stifle innovation and competition by making it easy to quash "unauthorized" uses of media and technology.
DRM has proliferated thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA), which sought to outlaw any attempt to bypass DRM.
