Copy protection

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Copy Protection, also known as Digital Rights Management (DRM), is a term applied to any technique used to prevent unauthorized copying of any work in any medium which would otherwise be relatively easy to copy. It is most commonly applied to digital media such as CDs and DVDs, but is also used in some proprietary file formats to prevent access to the work on unauthorized machines. It may aso be applied to measures such as "watermarking" of digital images, which does not prevent copying but makes the image unusable for resale purposes.

Copy protection is almost never applied to traditional/analog media such as books, paintings, or vinyl records, partly because these media are already laborious to copy and expensive to reproduce in a form which appears similar to the original, and partly because analog copy-protection is difficult to implement. The chief use of copy-protection in the analog world is printed money, certificates of authenticity, bank checks, credit cards, and other such items (is there a word or phrase which encompasses all those?).

Copy Protection is controversial because (1) the techniques most commonly used are imprecise and tend to have effects far beyond their intent, (2) the most precise techniques require a centralized authority to excercise control over certain aspects of the user's computer, which many people are unwilling to cede, and (3) the same companies which are trying to enact and enforce excessive copy protection measures are usually the same ones taking draconian measures to punish anyone found to be doing unauthorized copying; the taint from these latter actions has rubbed off on the former.

Alternatives

• Free Legal Downloads for $6/month: a model for subsidized music distribution

Links

• DigitalConsumer.org: "Protecting fair-use rights in the digital world"
• Electronic Frontier Foundation: "Defending Freedom in the Digital World"
• An Introduction to Copyfighting: some more recent copy-protection history
• Standards vs. DRM
• Trusted Computing FAQ: "Trusted Computing" is a much more comprehensive implementation of DRM than anything seen so far, with some very worrisome possible consequences.

Discussion

• 2006-01-23 DRM is a complete lie: article by Charlie Demerjian in The Inquirer
• 2005-09-22 And they call this an information society: blog post with interesting reactions

News

• 2006-02-16 RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use
• 2006-02-13 The Great HDCP Fiasco: HDCP-encrypted content (e.g. Blu-ray) will only work on pre-built machines from certain manufacturers, because free software projects won't be able to afford the license
• 2005-11-01 Sony DRM Hacks Your PC