Controversially Digital Rights Management Is Said to Fight Copyright Infringement Online

-What Digital Rights Management is, opposing views, pro's and con's-

Digital rights management (DRM) relates to a class of access control, which refers to exerting control over who can interact with a resource; most of the time this involves an authority. Digital rights management is a technology that is used by hardware manufactures, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. Content providers claim that digital rights management is necessary to fight copyright infringement online and that it can help the copyright holder maintain it's finally say as the product is going out. An example of this is a movie director has the authoritative say in the final cut. People opposed to digital rights management argue that there is no evidence that digital rights management helps prevent copyright infringement, but it serves only to bash legitimate customers, and that digital rights management helps big business end innovation and competition.

-Digital Rights Management, works to decrease piracy and copying-

Digital rights management technologies try to give control to the seller of digital content or devices after it has been given to a consumer. In a simpler form, digital rights management technologies attempt to control what you can and can't do with the media and hardware you've purchased. For digital content it means preventing the consumer access, denying the user the ability to copy the content and produce such hardware. Digital rights management products were developed in response to the rapid increase in online piracy of commercially marketed material, which increased through the mass use of peer-to-peer file exchange programs, well talk about that later. Typically digital rights management is used by embedding a code that prevents copying and specifies a time period in which the content can be accessed or limits the number of devices the media can be installed on

-What Digital Rights Management means to me, downloading, and Apple-

Personally, I think digital rights management is very useful, but I don't think that it discourages piracy. For example, Apple is changing the way digital rights management works, digital rights management is a nuisance for the user. "We are going to be selling non-DRM music from the summer", says Dave Elston, HMV's digital content manager. Amazon has announced that its DRM-free MP3 download store, already online in the US, will be rolled out internationally later this year, according to this article.
I think that if one of the top music industry software programs, Apple, is abandoning DRM then they most likely know the best solution for users. DRM means to my downloads what is means to most people's downloads that it's going to be harder to download illegal music, which most people and college students do.