What Industry Executives need to know about DRM...

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. It has also become known as Digital Restrictions Management as a backlash from all the problems and issues DRM has caused hardware manufacturers, software development companies, media distributors and consumers over the years. Consumers want on demand music, video, movies anywhere at anytime and they are willing to pay for it. I've done enough research and field tests to make this claim. This is also true for media distributors and retailers who have been yearning for the ability to manufacture media on demand to consumers. However, many current DRM policies and technologies do not facilitate this kind of media access and distribution. Until we foster and promote better DRM strategies, money will continue to be lost to the pirates...

I meet with industry executives all the time and content protection and the secure distribution of content is a very big deal. DRM is important to the Entertainment, Music and Media industries, i.e. the content producers, in that these industries want to safe guard their intellectual property and copyright protected material from piracy so their financial interests can be protected. Make sense to me.

With respect to piracy, the music industry has been hit the hardest with significant drops in sales year over year. It's still very common to see people share music files over peer-to-peer networks and not think twice about having to pay a single cent. Also, boot leg copies of the latest movies are readily available on the net or DVD just about anywhere you go. Bottom line, piracy continues to run rampant and it's an issue that needs to be better addressed moving forward.

The goal behind DRM is to ensure that copyright protected media is accessible to only the consumers that pay for it. Many of the negative connotations associated with DRM are derived from the poor designs employed by many content protection schemes as well as from the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act passed in the U.S. in 1998. I'll talk more about DRM technologies later, but DMCA is the entertainment and media industries strategy to make it illegal for anyone to develop and use products that circumvent DRM related technologies. This is huge and has both good and bad implications. The spirit behind the DMCA law makes sense, but the law itself as written, interpreted and legally practiced has short comings. DMCA allows content producers to license and dictate how hardware manufacturers and software development companies enforce DRM technologies in their media related products. In short, media hardware manufacturers and software companies have to support and integrate licensed DRM technologies to comply with the mandates of DMCA.

As a result, there have been a slew of licensed DRM technologies integrated and deployed by various hardware manufacturers over the years from analog protection systems, Marcovision and Dwight Cavendish, to content protection systems like CSS, DTCP, HDCP, TIVOGUARD, etc. DCMA also influence software companies to embed DRM technologies into their products, e.g. Microsoft's Windows Media DRM and Real Network's Helix DRM. There has been extensive criticism that DMCA forces all companies that make media related equipment or software to support DRM technologies that financially benefit specific organizations only and no one else which potentially inhibit innovation and good old fashion competition. DMCA also makes litigation by media companies very easy regardless of whether a direct copy right violation has occurred. This has caused many respected scientific research and security related web portals to just shut down and has provoked many heated arguments about justice and the right to compete.

As technological advancements are made with High Definition TV, IPTV, Broadband, WiFi, and Mobile technologies, new emerging DRM systems are being developed to keep up - Advance Access Content System, Broadcast Flag, MagicGate, Open Mobile Alliance, SmartRight, Video Content Protection System are emerging DRM technologies that will be licensed in many products to come.

The big question I want you to think about is whether or not we are headed down the right path. Does DRM practices have to be so nasty? A well known example is Sony's decision to integrate a rootkit to copy protect their music CD's. This turned into a huge PR nightmare and caused Sony to recall the music cd's and rethink it's whole DRM strategy and left many consumers in a outrage! There are many cases where web sites were shutdown due to DMCA violations, it’s a good thing the safe harbor provisions were put into DCMA or many ISP would be out of business and half the internet would be gone.

I offer that there is a better solution. I believe the right DRM strategy is to make things simple and easily accessible to the consumers and media distributors. I believe consumers in general are good people and will pay for copy protected media if it’s readily available, globally reachable, and fast. This is not to say we throw security technologies out the door (God knows that would impact me financially), but rather make it clear to the industry that DRM strategies needs to evolve and focus less on restricting the rights of consumers and more to promote the availability and access channels that allow consumers to pay for copy protected material.

I'm a big fan of global media distribution networks and the download-and-burn concept. The sooner we go to market with IPTV, HDTV, High Speed Broadband & Mobile Communications, easily accessible and feature rich set top boxes and media devices, and employ the use of multiple broadcast and distribution channels and just flood consumers and media distributors with every imaginable means to buy licensed content - guess what?

THEY WILL!!!