Digital Rights Management

Summary

Digital rights management and similar technologies will prevent users from doing things they might consider reasonable (it would be unnecessary otherwise). If this is imposed without reference to users, or is abused by copyright owners or software vendors, a backlash may result.

Mechanism

Digital rights management and trusted computing are generic names for technologies which prevent the user from controlling certain aspects of their own computers. This done to enforce the protection of copyright. It carries a number of risks, such as the potential for users not to be able to access material they consider they own or have a right to. This could occur for several reasons including poorly implemented or old software, disputes with copyright owners, or an attempt to make unlicensed copies of copyrighted material.

As software is revised old data may become inaccessible. Files may be in old formats which are no longer supported. In some cases these formats are not publicly documented making extracting the text from them uncertain. Commercial pressures may lead software vendors to deliberately "orphan" formats in order to maintain an advantage in market share.

Comment

Thus far many fielded DRM systems have been cracked. [For example: Apple Inc's iTunes and the CSS system used to protect content on pre-recorded DVDs have both been cracked.] However, this is likely to get rarer and those systems which have not been cracked will come to dominate the market.

Example Mitigations

Public education

Government refusal to accept protected files in email