Digital Rights Management and Fair

Question: Discuss about the Digital Rights Management and Fair. Answer: Introduction: The given articles refer to the development of remote control over digital content. This is primarily done through various DRM (Digital Rights Management) systems which claim that they provide persistent protection and therefore can potentially distinguish between an authorised user and a copyright infringement. The size of the global DRM market pegged at $ 3.5 billion also is indicative of the high demand of these systems so as to provide protection of digital content (Stamp, 2002). The DRM system is essentially based on cryptography with companies making tall claims about the security offered in this manner (Sharpe, 2004). The major problem with regards to DRM is that the security offered by these cannot be verified unless they are open to public scrutiny. However, till now the designs of these systems is not available in the public domain. It is an established trend that the any cryptosystem that is not vetted by the public and the cryptographic community is not trustworthy (Stamp, 2002). As a result, there is a potential fear that all claims about DRM systems are just marketing gimmicks. Further, those DRM systems that have been fielded have not proved very secure. Besides, various experts also express their doubts over the tall claims made by DRM vendors (Sharpe, 2004). Additionally, the DRM system also has its own risks. Further, the security of the DRM system can be strengthened using tampering proof hardware but this would give rise to additional risks as this hardware would not be controlled by users but remotely based third parties (Stamp, 2002). Thus, it is imperative that equilibrium needs to be established between risk and security offered. References Sharpe, V. (2004), Digital Rights Management and Fair Use by Design, Technical Communication, 51(3), 455 Stamp, M. (2002), Risks of Digital Rights Management, Communications of the ACM, 45(9), 120