Re: DRM Issue
DRM technologies attempt to control use of digital media by preventing access, copying or conversion to other formats by end users. Long before the arrival of digital or even electronic media, copyright holders, content producers, or other financially or artistically interested parties had business and legal objections to copying technologies. Examples include: player piano rolls early in the 20th century, audio tape recording, and video tape recording (e.g. the "Betamax case" in the U.S.). Copying technology thus exemplifies a disruptive technology.
The advent of digital media and analog/digital conversion technologies, especially those that are usable on mass-market general-purpose personal computers, has vastly increased the concerns of copyright-dependent organizations, especially within the music and movie industries. While analog media inevitably loses quality with each copy generation, and in some cases even during normal use, digital media files may be duplicated an unlimited number of times with no degradation in the quality of subsequent copies. The advent of personal computers as household appliances has made it convenient for consumers to convert media (which may or may not be copyrighted) originally in a physical/analog form or a broadcast form into a universal, digital form (this process is called ripping) for location- or timeshifting. This, combined with the Internet and popular file sharing tools, has made unauthorized distribution of copies of copyrighted digital media (so-called digital piracy) much easier.
Last edited by Probability : 07-31-2009 at 06:20 AM.
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