Assignment 3: Copyright & DRM

While imposing digital rights management (DRM) regulations upon honest consumers of copyrighted materials is perhaps unfair to paying consumers, it is necessary to prevent illegal uses of copyrighted materials. Drawing a line to allow “honest” users to make duplications of copyrighted materials but disallowing copyright infringers to do the same would be ineffective, and thus decrease creators’ revenues.
Digital rights management is a term that refers to the restrictions enforced upon users of digital media or devices used to play digital media. These restrictions are imposed by law makers, copyright owners, publishers, and manufacturers of the hardware that deciphers the digital media for consumers’ use. The goal of DRM is to control the ways in which people consume copyrighted digital media to protect creators’ rights over their creations for limited amounts of time (Ovalle, 2005). Because the creators of digital media would not make money if everyone had free access to their creations, DRM tries to limit the ease at which unauthorized digital copies are made to prevent the pirating of copyrighted materials.
The conflict is that honest, paying customers have limitations on their consumption of the materials they rightfully paid for. Opponents of DRM argue that once someone has paid for creative digital media (like films, music, etc.) they have the right to use it for personal reasons in whichever way they would like. Opponents also believe that DRM drives competition down because copyrights protect manufacturers from their competitors’ products. Everything from garage door openers to printer cartridges can be copyrighted—which as a result decreases competition in the consumer marketplace and thus drives product costs up (Doctorow, 2004).
DRM proponents are concerned that anyone can claim the “honest” user title even if they are dishonest. It is nearly impossible to draw a line that appropriately punishes those who deserve it, but allow exemption to those who do not. Cory Doctorow, an anti-DRM activist posed a scenario of a mother who purchased a DVD for her children, but in anticipation of the DVD’s destruction, wanted to make a VHS copy for her children to get their sticky fingers all over. Then, when the jelly-smeared VHS was in fact broken, she would still have the original copy for future enjoyment. This mother was an honest consumer, as her copying purposes were for personal use rather than for distributing the copies to her children’s daycare center. When she tried to copy the DVD however, she was not able to due to a restriction imposed by software on the DVD itself as well as hardware inside the DVD player (Doctorow, 2004).
The mother was likely frustrated by her inability to make copies for her children, but imagine the consequences that media creators would face if people were allowed to freely make copies of copyrighted materials. Anybody could make copies from the living room “for their children,” but secretly sell them. This would result in the loss of massive revenue for the creators.
Without the existence of clear regulations, digital media creators could lose control over the distribution of their products. It is necessary to impose physical restrictions like anti-pirating hardware and software upon users to ensure the ethical use of digital media. It is too easy to claim that files are being shared for personal uses, and without physical limitations in place illegal sharing would quickly get out of control, and as a result digital media creators would never receive financial payoff. While it would be nice to trust those who are trustworthy, it would be impossible to distinguish them from the dishonest, so boundaries must be drawn.
Sources:
1. Digital rights management. (2008, September 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:53, September 12, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Digital_rights_management&oldid=237615187
2. Doctorow, C. (2004). Digital Rights Management. Changethis.com, issue 4.03. Retrieved September 12, 2008, from http://changethis.com/4.DRM
3. Ovalle, C. (2005). Information in Cyberspace: Module Five: Introduction to Copyright. Retrieved September 12, 2008, from University of Texas at Austin, School of Information Web site http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/%7Ei312co/1.php