Digital Rights Management (DRM)

• IT and consumer electronics players often seem to be in conflict with rights holders.

• The music sector, presented as the first victim of peer-to-peer exchange networks, is now a pioneer in virtual content distribution.

• DRM cannot solve the problems that legislators have yet to clarify, such as the right to private copying.

• DRM interoperability remains a difficult objective to achieve except, perhaps in the world of mobile telecommunications. Digital distribution and protection from unauthorised copying There are now several digital distribution channels:
- Virtual distribution that includes:

• Paying distribution with controlled access similar to that of digital pay TV via cable, satellite and ADSL

• Paying distribution via the internet that uses a DRM system • Free distribution without content protection and without rights holders’ approval via peer-topeer networks.
- Physical distribution that mainly concerns CDs, SACD, DVDs, Audio DVDs and future supports such as HD DVDs and Blu-Ray, protected by technical and usually anti-copying measures Technical protection measures for virtual and physical goods Technical protection measures (TPMs) consist of encoding contents with the help of encryption algorithms and secret and/or public keys. TPMs are related to access protection techniques (conditional access to television, CDs and DVDs) and content protection via the intrication of a tattoo or watermark . Most contents can be encrypted including television programmes via settop boxes and/or chip cards, optical supports (CDs, DVDs, and now SACDs, Audio DVDs etc.) or virtual distribution via streaming or downloading. TPMs, access management and tattooing tools do not ensure rights management, but offer a necessary framework that rights management tools can be incorporated into.

Access control This usually involves a set-top box incorporating a system that makes it possible to transmit rights (bouquets of channels to which a subscription has been taken out, for example) and to invoice eventual uses on a pay-per-view and video-on-demand basis. Initially video sequences could only be displayed on television sets or recorded using a video recorder. The growing possibility of interconnecting entertainment equipment (TV sets, PCs, mobile telephones, set-top boxes, PVRs, games consoles, MP3 players, internet access, video cameras, Hi-Fi stereos etc.) is creating anxiety on the part of content providers and broadcasters.

DRM (Digital Right Management) DRM concerns the management of copies of virtual goods. It goes far beyond simple anti-copying protection, but can notably make it possible to identify a work, rights holders and authorised uses, as well as making it possible to describe related rights such as simple and multiple playing, recording, simple and multiple copying, copying limited to selected pieces of equipment etc. It enables rights distribution and the collection of corresponding data (a function that it shares with access control). DRM can also be linked to access control. It can also be combined with a technical protection measure.

In view of the various technical solutions on offer, as well as their implications for users, choices are far from fixed. A growing number of industry consortia between technology producers (Thomson, Philips, HP, NDS and many others) are offering solutions to different aspects of DRM, or taking part in various alliances.

Unlike the organisations that aim to define protection systems, the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition unites most of the technology companies and public bodies, and notably aims to question the most restrictive measures. DRM and virtual content distribution DRM