DRM

=//DRM (Digital Rights Management) //=

Digital rights management or DRM technologies attempt to control use of digital media by preventing access, copying or conversion to other formats by end users. Long before the arrival of digital or even electronic media, copyright holders, content producers, or other financially or artistically interested parties had business and legal objections to copying technologies. DRM enables the publisher to control what can and cannot be done with a single instance. This will lock up your digital media. For example, a publisher can limit the number of viewings, number of copies, or which devices the media can be transferred to. DRM is now backed up by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). If you circumvent digital media, even to enable non-infringed fair uses, DRM locks or will create the tools to do so and you might be on the receiving end of a lawsuit.

An early example of a DRM system was the Content Scrambling System (CSS) employed by the DVD Forum on film DVDs since 1996. CSS used a simple encryption algorithm, and required device manufacturers to sign license agreements that restricted the inclusion of features, such as digital outputs that could be used to extract high-quality digital copies of the film, in their players. Windows Vista contains a DRM system called the Protected Media Path, which contains the 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.

There are many methods to bypass DRM control on audio and video content. One simple method to bypass DRM on audio files is to burn the content to an audio CD and then rip it into DRM-free files. This is only possible when the software that plays these DRM-restricted audio files allows CD-burning. This would only allow up to 80 minutes of music at a time and then you could rip the music back in. Some software programs will block this and only allow DATA CDs to be burned with an encryptions on it.

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DRM is very controversial because people believe if they pay for their digital media they should be able to use it freely. Some believe DRM only encourages people to find other means of obtaining digital media through programs that potentially allow illegal downloading. Having DRM is sometimes needed so the digital media cannot be illegally distributed by the people who buy it and host it to download by others. Some companies sell their digital media at slightly higher prices and use "DRM FREE" as a big selling point. Apple's iTunes Store allows users to purchase a track online for $.99 US. The tracks purchased use Apple's FairPlay DRM system. Apple later launched //iTunes Plus//, which offered higher quality DRM-free tracks for a higher price. On October 17, 2007, iTunes Plus became available at the usual $.99 price, replacing the non-Plus tracks.[13] As of January 6, 2009 Apple had announced at their keynote that iTunes will be completely DRM free by the end of the month



Sources: http://www.eff.org/issues/drm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management