Digital Rights Management Elusive
Even though stopping, or at least controlling, digital content piracy is a priority for copyright holders around the world, the actual development and implementation of Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions continues to be a contentious issue for both the content development and information technology industries.
In a recent report, high-tech market research firm, In-Stat/MDR notes that there has been little tangible progress in the deployment of viable DRM solutions.
In fact, much of the past year has been marked by continuing disagreements between the two industries, primarily based on different strategies for combating content piracy.
More specifically, the content development industry, which consists of the recording industry and the movie studios, has repeatedly emphasized the need for immediate DRM solutions that stop all unauthorized copying and distribution. Meanwhile, the information technology industry is emphasizing that DRM solutions should support the concept of "fair use," which allows consumers to make copies of some types of copyrighted content for their own personal use. In the US, these disagreements have led to an increase in both DRM-related lawsuits and new legislative initiatives.
However, despite a lack of progress in curbing actual content piracy, there have been some significant attitude changes that may ultimately improve cooperation between the two industries.
These changes have even led to a few small-scale inter-industry implementations of technology-based DRM solutions. In addition, within the next few months, In-Stat/MDR anticipates announcements from both the movie studios and recording industries that will herald new and improved online services that offer expanded "Pay-per-View" and "Pay-per-Listen" services.
"Unfortunately," according to Mike Paxton, a Senior Analyst with In-Stat/MDR, "most of these services will be virtually ignored by consumers who are used to accessing and downloading their digital content for free."
Other findings
- The actual dollar amounts lost to digital piracy remain hard to determine. For instance, estimates of the US motion picture industry's losses to piracy in 2002 range from $1.3 billion to almost $4 billion.
- Consumer response to the DRM debate has been tepid, at best. Most consumers seem to believe that DRM issues do not directly affect their lives or finances.
- In the US, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) remains a key "flash point" for of the debate surrounding DRM. While widely thought to be outdated and ineffective, the law continues to be used as the basis for new court challenges and lawsuits.
- In some European countries, the decades-old practice of assigning "levies" on products like blank media and recording devices has allowed governments to collect money and "reimburse" content developers. More recently, levies have been assigned to some digital consumer electronics devices, and there are even proposals to assess levies on personal computers. In the US, the technology industry insists that DRM solutions should be market-driven solutions, not government imposed solutions like levies.
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