What Is Digital Rights Management (DRM)?

Everything we do creates content. Whether it's movies, music, social media, or company files – we are constantly creating content that needs to be preserved and protected. The digital age has brought about an urgent need to safeguard the ownership and integrity of content. This is where the concept of Digital Rights Management (DRM) comes into play. In this blog article, we explore what is digital rights management and how digital rights management software can prevent unauthorized access, distribution, and copying of protected content. Before discussing Digital Rights Management further, let us understand what Digital Piracy is and how the concept of DRM came into picture.

What Is Digital Piracy?

Interpol describes digital piracy as “the illegal copying or distribution of copyrighted material via the Internet.” The ease with which content can be pirated has made it much more accessible, affordable, and easier for many consumers. The number of visits to online piracy websites reached 141 billion in 2023. Research has also shown that the average gross value from the piracy of music, video, live sports, software, computer games, and eBooks was between £3.6 billion and £7.5 billion in 2021 alone.

Ignoring copyright laws and policies to pirate digital content can destabilize and negatively impact creators and companies. Technology has advanced enough to make cracking codes and encryption easier for digital pirates. Fortunately, prevention has also evolved in this time as well in the form of DRM Digital Rights Management. Now, let’s answer the question: What is Digital Rights Management?

What Is Digital Rights Management (DRM)?

The Digital Rights Management definition can be boiled down to a set of policies, processes, and tools that allow companies to limit the access, distribution, and control of protected digital content. Digital Rights Management (DRM) ensures that digital content cannot be redistributed, copied, or unethically shared with users who did not subscribe to or pay for the content. This preserves the right of ownership and Intellectual Property (IP) of creators.

DRM allows musicians, artists, creatives, and organizations as a whole to protect their valued content by restricting access and limiting what consumers can do with the content they purchase. Previously, content protection was in the form of encryption keys given to the owners of the product, however, as time went by, people found ways to replicate or steal these keys – rendering them obsolete. The Digital Rights Management (DRM) framework offers data and content security that cannot be infringed in the first place. Let’s try to understand more about how Digital Rights Management works.

How Does Digital Rights Management (DRM) Work?

Digital Rights Management works by putting up barriers that prevent unauthorized access, editing, and downloads. DRM ensures rightful access through several methods, including:

• Access Control: With Digital Rights Management software in place, companies can limit the type and number of users who have access to content. DRM software uses access authentication – such as usernames, passwords, codes, and digital certification – to filter out any unauthorized access.
• Locality Limits: Many pieces of media can only be played or accessed in specific physical locations across the globe or on specific devices. Using Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, the DRM can restrict access from outside those boundaries.
• Digital Rights Enforcement: DRM also seeks to enforce the digital rights and usage policies set by the owners to ensure the integrity of their content within set conditions.
• License and Redistribution Management: Redistributing protected content is illegal and unethical. DRM software ensures that any copying or redistribution is done with valid licensing permissions.
• Encryption of Content: Most DRM software will use encryption methods to make content unreadable on unauthorized devices or without valid access codes or authorization.
• Watermarking: This is a way DRM software can embed unique identifiers into the content itself to maintain ownership and prevent unlawful distribution under another name or brand.
• Usage Tracking: The Digital Rights Management framework also tracks the usage, sharing, and access to the content – providing feedback on consumer behavior and restricting unauthorized content sharing.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the different types of digital rights management that exist today.

Types of Digital Rights Management (DRM)

When it comes to content protection and management, companies need to be entirely confident in their ability to safeguard the integrity of digital media and data. There are three main forms of Digital Rights Management currently:

Google Widevine DRM

The Google Widevine DRM is a proprietary Digital Rights Management software developed by Google. The content protection system is divided into different sections and protects most major web browsers with both Android and iOS. Major partners around the world using Google Widevine DRM include Google Play, YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, Discovery+, Paramount+ and more.

Apple FairPlay DRM

Apple also came out with its form of DRM using Apple FairPlay DRM. This software ensures the secure delivery of streaming media to devices through an HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol. FairPlay Streaming (FPS) allows content providers, encoding vendors, and delivery networks to encrypt content, securely exchange keys, and protect playback on iOS, iPadOS, watchOS 7, tvOS, and macOS.

Microsoft Playready DRM

Microsoft comes equipped with the Microsoft Playready DRM software. This secures the distribution of content over a network and prevents unauthorized use of its software. The Microsoft DRM ensures seamless sharing of protected content among devices and between people.

Now that we know where DRM can be used for these major companies, let’s try to understand more about how Digital Rights Management can be used in real life.

Digital Rights Management Use Cases

Digital content is found in almost every sector of the modern world. This is why protection and restrictions need to be applied across industries. Digital Rights Management DRM plays a pivotal role in protecting ownership, securing data, and restricting unauthorized access. These are some of the examples of DRM use cases across industries:

Media and Entertainment DRM

Naturally, the most common example of digital content is entertainment. Movies, TV shows, music, eBooks, and more all form part of protected digital content. Musicians, actors, and artists can all suffer major financial and reputational losses from piracy and unauthorized distribution of content. DRM software ensures that content creators are rightfully compensated and their ownership is ironclad.

Publishing and Education DRM

Academia can be a difficult field to navigate when it comes to preventing content theft and distribution. Publishers need to protect eBooks, digital academic articles, and more through proper DRM tools. Academics can use DRM software to limit access to private educational materials, like textbooks and scholarly articles. They can also ensure that academic works cannot be edited or altered in any way, thus ensuring academic and historical integrity.

Software and Gaming DRM

Most software and gaming companies use DRM solutions to ensure that only paying subscribers have access to games and platforms. Organizations often use key codes and licensing to keep out any unauthorized users.

Corporate Data Protection DRM

Data is a vital and valuable resource for any company. Keeping client data secure is crucial to maintaining a trusted organization. DRM solutions can be used to organize, store, and manage private data while ensuring limited access.

Healthcare DRM

The healthcare sector processes and stores scores of confidential and essential digital files at any given time. Using DRM software, healthcare providers can ensure that medical records, patient files, and other sensitive digital content are kept secure and with limited access. DRM also ensures that healthcare organizations are compliant with data regulations and makes it easier for auditing to take place.

Now that we know how Digital Rights Management (DRM) can be used, let’s take a look at how it compares to Digital Asset Management – or DAM.

DRM vs. DAM

Digital Asset Management (DAM) is a software used to centrally store and manage digital content. This ensures controlled storage and management of all digital assets within a company. While DRM and DAM may seem similar in how they control access, they are fundamentally different. While DAM focuses on controlling storage and management, DRM is more specific and aligned with access control, usage, and monitoring. DAM can be considered a crucial element of DRM software. When used together, both frameworks offer secure and controlled access management for digital content. We’ll now explore some of the main benefits of Digital Rights Management.

Benefits of Digital Rights Management

Digital Rights Management is vital to maintaining accurate, protected, and preserved digital content for any organization. While companies mostly benefit from the security and privacy of their digital content, DRM Digital Rights Management software also presents a host of other benefits as well:

• Guaranteed Ownership Rights: Many artists struggle with maintaining genuine and authentic ownership over their works. The right DRM solutions ensure that creators have verified ownership rights that protect their work from being altered, rebranded, or stolen in any way. This also applies to research done by scientists or experts across any industry.
• Protected Income Streams: Piracy and leaks can directly impact the amount of money creators make off their work when people opt to freely access their content rather than pay for it. DRM software ensures that income streams are protected and that creators are fairly compensated.
• Ensuring Appropriate Content: The Internet is large and universally accessible, however, a lot of the digital content found on the Internet is not appropriate for everyone. DRM solutions can help to restrict certain types of content to specific audiences by limiting access according to age.
• Copyright Education: Copyright conditions are especially important when dealing with any form of digital content. Most people simply ignore the copyright details and think that they have unlimited access to the data they subscribe to. This is not the case and many organizations have had to take legal action against consumers who unknowingly abused copyright restrictions. Using DRM ensures that consumers have proper knowledge of what they can or cannot do with digital content they have access to.
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Digital Rights Management software provides a clear number of benefits for users and creators alike. However, no framework is without its challenges. Let’s explore some of the challenges of more traditional DRM solutions.

Challenges of Traditional Digital Rights Management Tools

While Digital Rights Management tools can be useful, the more traditional DRM solutions present quite a few challenges as well:

• Many of these solutions are limited by the type of files they support and cannot be used across different platforms.
• Setting up DRM software for digital media assets can be tedious and complex for first-time users.
• Certain DRM frameworks can be inflexible and require users to be constantly available for authorization without any network interruptions.
• Many DRM solutions can be easily hacked or broken as technology and digital pirates become smarter and evolve. The entire encryption process can be very costly for most creators.
• DRM frameworks often need regular maintenance and upkeep – which can be expensive and time-consuming.

DRM can be simple for many users but you need to be properly equipped and educated before trying to implement it for your company. Another great way to enhance the Digital Rights Management of digital content is through the use of NFTs. Let’s explore that as a concept next.

How NFTs Can Improve Digital Rights Management

When it comes to digital content, many people have probably already heard of the term NFT before. A Non-Fungible Token – or NFT – is a unique digital asset stored on the blockchain that maintains authenticity and digital rights. Artists often use NFTs to create a singular and indestructible digital certificate that prevents replication and proves true ownership. NFTs can also be traded or accessed across different platforms while still keeping their original ownership verification – preventing duplication, intellectual theft, and more. In this way, NFTs can help to establish better Digital Rights management.

NFT Digital Rights Management ensures that creators and artists have full access control over their content as well as ensuring seamless royalty payments through the sale of content. With blockchain technology, creators have a decentralized, safe, and transparent platform to manage their digital assets. NFTs present a host of benefits for Digital Rights Management, including:

• Transparency and Decentralization: With blockchain technology, NFTs can be traded securely through a visible and decentralized process to prevent fraud or theft. This means that no unnecessary third parties are involved in transactions.
• Irreplaceable Assets: The ‘non-fungible’ part of NFT means that the digital asset cannot be altered or replaced in any way. This creates a permanent record of ownership for the creator.
• Verifiable Ownership: NFTs use advanced ownership tracking to maintain a secure line of authenticity at all times.
• Monetization: The use of an NFT allows creators to capitalize on their digital assets through secure sales and transactions.
• Seamless User Experience: NFTs provide creators with a real sense of ownership over digital assets across multiple platforms securely and seamlessly.

While the concept of NFTs and blockchain technology can still be new and seemingly complex to most users, the Digital Rights Movement is pushing more creators to respond to growing concerns about content safety in innovative and advanced ways. NFTs can provide concrete ownership verification and ensure Digital Rights Management integrity for all types of digital content today. Now that we know more about NFT Digital Rights Management, we’ll look at what type of DRM software and tools are available at the moment.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) Software and Tools

Digital Rights Management software and hardware can be used for different purposes depending on what your business needs. Digital content needs to be properly protected using encryption, watermarking, and embedded codes. However, every organization has different expectations for its data access control framework, and finding the right one requires proper research and understanding of your company and digital assets. Try to ensure that your data is protected using efficient, advanced, and verified Digital Rights Management software and solutions.