Digital Rights Management: Pitting the content creator versus the user

What is digital rights management? Digital rights management is the attempt by a copyright owner to restrict the number of ways a consumer can use or manipulate a digital product. Dozens of digital products are available today including music, movies, e-books, software and games, amongst others. There are two main antagonists in the controversy surrounding digital rights management. On the one hand there is the creator of the material, who could be an artiste, a publisher or software developer, while on the other hand there is the user who purchases the right to use the product. How much should the creator of such material limit its use (of course assuming that it is necessary to do so)? To begin with the question of whether it is necessary to implement digital rights management, we should be asking “what is digital rights management supposed to achieve?” The key objective of digital rights management is content protection. Content creators invest their time, money and efforts in generating these materials and are therefore entitled to benefit from their usage. This is the essence behind copyright and patent protection. It is necessary to protect such person’s intellectual rights and also assure them of receiving financial rewards for their efforts. Before the proliferation of computers and the web, it was pretty easy to limit access to copyrighted material such as books, music and movies. Then came computers, scanners, and the web, and all of a sudden one could easily scan a novel and send copies to as many people for free. Think of the millions of users who have benefited from free music downloads. Whenever people make and share free copies of a product, the creator loses money. Unfortunately, traditional copyright laws have failed in regulating such illicit sharing of copyrighted material and as a result creators can no longer rely on law enforcement agencies for protection. This has prompted the need for proactive digital rights management. On the flipside of this argument is a buyer who has paid for a digital product, be it a DVD or a PDF E-book. How much freedom does he have in using the product before content protection mechanisms kick in? Consumers have complained that they can no longer enjoy using certain products because of the content protection methods being applied. Think of the owner of a music CD. Doesn't he have a right to copy the songs to his PC and subsequently to his MP3 player? There is nothing wrong with that so long as he is not illegally sharing the music with others. However some music publishers include software that precludes any form of file transfers and so the user is effectively rendered powerless over the contents of that CD. Critics argue that such content protection negates the principle of fair use because the user is severely restricted in his enjoyment of the product. The ultimate question therefore is “what is digital rights management limits vis a vis the buyer’s entitlement to enjoy the content?” Likewise, what is digital rights management supposed to do and not to do? While the jury is still out on these questions, content owners and buyers will continue to tussle over what can and cannot be done with digital material.