Who "Polices" Todays Media?

What is Digital Restrictions Management?

 The DRM is the media police. Have your ever tried to play a game on your phone and you cannot play because the game says that it requires a Internet connection? Or more close to home, who controls what music sites, are allowed and not allowed to provide free music? Artist and companies hire DRM in order to police their work. The DRM encrypts the customer’s information in order to limit distribution without the customer’s permission. In other words, they enforce the copyrighted law, making it illegal to reproduce copyrighted material.

So how does the DRM do it?

The DRM encodes media. Through encoding music, videos, and data they are able to ensure that it is not being copied and mass distributed without the proper dues to the artist. For example, ITunes formerly used the DRM to encrypt there media so that once the song was sold and downloaded to a computer, it could not be copied and played on other various technologies other than there own, this included not being able to burn CDs. Many of the file trading companies that have recently become famous, have found the loophole in the DRM. Many companies have claimed that their sites are person-to-person sharing, which is legal. This allows them to share media with the intensions becoming a large media distribution outlet.

What about us?  How does the DRM affect us?

As a college student many books are becoming placed online. These online textbooks can either be purchased or rented. In renting a textbook, you are not allowed to download any parts of the book due to that company hiring the DRM to police their work. If this is so, what are the consequences if you do not have Internet access? For that period of time you would not have access to information that you rightfully paid for. The DRM also restricts the public from making back up copies and honestly taking what is rightfully ours. In playing devils advocate, it means we must pay for our media. As the DRM regulates, we must all pay individually for our media and sharing becomes more difficult. It also means we must be careful in what we do. File sharing documents/media that is protected with copyrights are illegal. We must Stop-Think-Look-Share, to ensure that we are not committing a crime. Is this right?

Get involved!

Read the following Article by Defective by Design and begin to form your own opinion about the DRM.