The Triangle

Issue date: 4/10/09 Section: Ed-Op

Media Credit: Olivia Garrity

Computers allow data to be stored, copied and shared without much thought or effort from the end user's part. While most digital data (a phone number, a transcript of the SEC's mission statement, or even this article) has minimal value, some of it is highly valued and even copyrighted. This is the data that some publishers and copyright holders deem too valuable to be distributed without limiting its uses.

Digital Rights Management is the coined term for the different methods of protection used to keep the media safe from unlawful activities. Its main purpose is to prevent piracy. The problem is that DRM in its current form does not work effectively without some form of repercussions.

Stealing digital content is the same as stealing physical objects. People devote a lot of time and energy to create something, and it is their right to be paid as compensation for their efforts. DRM at its primitive level is righteous. The ways in which it goes about limiting uses, however, are not.

Digital music and videos usually have DRM incorporated that restricts the way they may be copied and played back. When I purchase a CD or DVD, I expect to be able to use it any way that I please. If I want to put a copy of a movie on my laptop and another on my iPod, I should be able to because I purchased the content. DRM argues that I have not obtained the full rights to the movie; I have only bought the right to view the movie under the specifications that the copyright holder has allowed. A song that I buy on iTunes cannot easily be made into a ringtone unless I also pay for the right to do so. This type of DRM exists because of greed. Publishers are trying to make as much profit as possible by essentially reselling the same product to the same user.

Another type of DRM exists because it ignores a legal right, presumption of innocence. This copy protection assumes that all buyers of the media will use it in an illegal manner. It may range in leniency from not allowing someone to play a computer game if the CD is not inserted, to installing monitoring-software on the computer without the user's consent. Either way, this is an inconvenience for the customers that are not going to return a game after installing it, or the ones that have no plans to sell copies at a discounted price.

What ends up happening is that people with illegal intentions find ways to circumvent the DRM, while the ones that abide by the laws have to put up with the annoyances of the software.

Continued...

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