Why is drm used

Securing ownership: DRM is crucial to helping authors and writers protect their work. They can use technology to retain ownership of their content and prevent anyone else from altering or rebranding it as their work.

This is also useful for scientists who want to protect their findings and inventions. Protecting income: Creating, filming, and editing documentaries, movies, and other videos costs creators money in the hope of selling their content for a profit. If that content gets leaked or shared without their consent, they can lose money.

DRM enables content creators to ensure only paying users can access their videos. Ensuring appropriate content access: DRM restricts content to specific audiences and limits content to intended audiences. For example, content intended for people over the age of 18 will be restricted to adults who can verify their age.

File privacy: DRM helps organizations secure their sensitive files and ensure they remain private. This prevents unauthorized users from accessing or reading confidential or sensitive information. DRM Software. They do this in several ways, including: Watermarks: Graphic files can be placed on assets, which enable creators or copyright holders to track unauthorized usage.

The watermark stays connected to a file when the digital content is copied, manipulated, or transformed into another format. Metadata: Digital assets have metadata that enables their copyright and licensing information to be captured and monitored. This is critical to tracking licensing details of stock audio files, photos, and videos to prevent unauthorized usage. Embed codes: Content owners can also use embed codes that control how and where their media is published online.

This is useful if the license of an image changes or expires because it enables the license to be changed or updated wherever the related embed code has been posted online. License agreements: Organizations can protect their content and software by requiring users to read and agree to their end-user license agreement EULA. An EULA is agreed the first time a user accesses a website, shares files, or downloads content, which helps organizations protect their assets from unauthorized usage.

Media and Entertainment Cybersecurity Challenges. However, they face common challenges, including: Intellectual property protection: Protecting content like music files, movies, and videos, as well as contract negotiations, scripts, and cut scenes, is crucial for media and entertainment companies.

This issue was highlighted by the Sony Pictures hack , which saw the leak of employee data plus unreleased movies, plans, and scripts for future films. The release of such content can have a major impact on companies' bottom line and reputation, which makes the use of DRM crucial to protecting their content. Network visibility: Many entertainment and media companies use cutting-edge technology to improve customer experience.

This is exacerbated as they deploy more security products to protect their infrastructure, which results in security silos that diminish visibility and increase inefficiency and risk. Protecting investments: Entertainment and media offerings require large upfront investment before they make a profit. Organizations need to prioritize security spending to protect this investment and minimize their risk.

Managing customer experience: Digital innovation is heavily focused on customer experience, as evidenced by the rapid rise of streaming services, online gaming, and virtual reality. These services rely on secure and reliable cloud-based solutions and mobile networks, which can be negatively affected by even a brief interruption in connectivity. It is crucial for organizations to deliver on customer demand to protect their reputation and prevent financial loss.

Protecting customer data: Increasingly stringent data and privacy regulations are especially important to major media and entertainment companies. These organizations often possess the personal and financial data of millions of people, and it is vital that this data remains safeguarded.

Digital rights management has become a cornerstone of the current content consumption landscape, especially with the rise of OTT streamers. The purpose of DRM is manifold, and typically includes these five attributes:.

Since the dawn of the digital age, copyright holders have been attempting to address the piracy problem.

This was initially software-based, i. As music, film, television and sports moved into the digital world, rights holders needed to find lightweight, non-intrusive and effective DRM technology solutions to protect their intellectual property. Early forms of DRM technology included putting physical limits on how often something could be copied or required users to type in product keys, which inevitably ended up in the public domain.

However, the concept of preventing people from exceeding fair use, stopping piracy and protecting content went to another level with the move to digital media and the need for digital rights management.

There are a number of different uses of DRM, meaning that DRM technology is very flexible and can be used to create a great variety of usage policies. The same DRM principles apply for any kind of video-enabled devices including smartphones, computers, tablets and gaming consoles.

DRM systems can also protect non-audio visual assets such as software, bytecodes, eBooks, and more. The rules that the DRM technology checks for are designed to be quick and simple, such as:. When you tell your set-top box or smart TV to play a particular movie, the DRM client in the device looks at the policies in the license to determine if they are satisfied.

If so, the client device can access the encryption key and use it to decrypt the movie for watching. The flexibility of these rules allows digital content providers to tailor their user experience through their digital rights management system.

Put simply, DRM technology is what copyright holders and providers of digital content now rely upon to build a successful business model and get rewarded for their hard work. Intertrust was one of the earliest firms to spot the need for DRM. Marlin created an industry-wide standard for securely providing digital content to the world.

For answering questions such as what is DRM, how does DRM work, and how it can help you protect service revenue, you can learn more through this link. Now that you have read this introduction, please watch our animated video that provides a graphical illustration of the concepts introduced in this post, specifically DRM technology principles, what is its function and how DRM works.

Bo Ferm is engaged in product marketing activities for Intertrust ExpressPlay. He has worked extensively with broadcasting and streaming technologies, with the past 15 years dedicated to media security in various forms.

The emerging threats to the growth of eSports. Protecting live performance streaming services. Big surge in live performance streaming is here to stay. Contact us. Toggle Navigation. Our unique approach to DLP allows for quick deployment and on-demand scalability, while providing full data visibility and no-compromise protection. Learn about digital rights management and why it is important in Data Protection , our series on the fundamentals of information security.

Digital rights management DRM is a way to protect copyrights for digital media. This approach includes the use of technologies that limit the copying and use of copyrighted works and proprietary software. In a way, digital rights management allows publishers or authors to control what paying users can do with their works. For companies, implementing digital rights management systems or processes can help to prevent users from accessing or using certain assets, allowing the organization to avoid legal issues that arise from unauthorized use.

Today, DRM is playing a growing role in data security. With the rise of peer-to-peer file exchange services such as torrent sites, online piracy has been the bane of copyrighted material.

DRM technologies do not catch those who engage in piracy. Instead, they make it impossible to steal or share the content in the first place. Most of the time, digital rights management includes codes that prohibit copying, or codes that limit the time or number of devices on which a certain product can be accessed. Publishers, authors, and other content creators use an application that encrypts media , data, e-book, content, software, or any other copyrighted material.

Only those with the decryption keys can access the material. They can also use tools to limit or restrict what users are able to do with their materials. Digital rights management also allows publishers and authors to access a log of people and times when certain media, content, or software was used. For instance, you can see when a particular e-book was downloaded or printed and who accessed it.

Here are a few common use cases for digital rights management:.