Need your opinion or info on DRM

Burning Software Copy Protection
#1

Hi I have a project to do and I need opinions from people.

  1. How will the future use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology be like?

  2. What are the factors that will prevent people from using or adopting this in the future?

  3. How common/widely practiced will DRM become in the future?

  4. Basically, how does DRM work?

Also are there any good simple (and to the point) beginner sites on describing how DRM works and how it’s used?

And any sites that describe the future use of DRM?

Thanks

#2
  1. We shall see soon enough.
  2. The only real factor that decides if DRM is used is which companies invest money in it. If for example Sony spends $20Million on DRM then it will be used. We don’t really get a say at this point.
  3. Extremely common.
  4. There are many variants of DRM all with different design.

Disclaimer
All answers are my opinion and could very easily be totally untrue :wink:

#3

thanks for your reply KitnaIsntHappy

anymore info on DRM? I’m sure you guys know more than me :iagree:

#4

My opinions…

  1. My guess would be more tight restrictions.

  2. Mainly that some consumers complain, however most people seem to put up with it (especially as much of the download content with DRM is much cheaper than a unprotected retail copy). Companies using DRM will only stop using it if it causes a loss in sales greater than the losses they estimate they would have due to piracy. As of now I don’t think any companies are considering giving it up, and many more are taking it up.

  3. I would agree with Kitna, that it will become very common. However I would say more effort would also go into cracking it. As of now most DRM is used in pay music services. As it is of poor quality anyway, and unprotected copies are sold in shops. It is must quicker and easier just to rip a copy from the retail CD and illegally spread on the internet than it would be to make a tool to crack the DRM protections. However as more media is distributed only with DRM the desire for people to crack it will increase.

  4. DRM can come in many forms, rather than passing on second hand information, here is a link for one of the most common forms of DRM - protected internet downloads (such as iTunes, MSN and Napster).

http://www.activeinternet.com/drm/drm_works.asp

Hope this also of some use!

Ben :slight_smile:

#5

Thanks for your reply.
Do DVDs and CDs have DRM protection on it? If not, will all retail DVDs/CDs have DRM so you can’t freely decrypt/rip them?

What about that InterActual Player that pops up when you put a DVD in your DVD-rom of your computer? Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1765/

#6

What are the different forms/types of DRM? What are they called and how many types are there? The only one I know about is the one that bcn_246 is talking about, the protected internet download purchases.

#7

DRM can include protection of media files, such as Windows Media files. That is probably the most commonly recognised form of DRM.
However DRM covers other fields as well.
Examples:
Alcohol 120%'s activation.
Valve’s Steam activation.
Wild Tangent games use a form of DRM also.
Any software solution to limit/restrict your use of a file/product is basically DRM.
So even a licence for an anti-virus software is basically a form of DRM.

#8

1. How will the future use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology be like?
It is likely to increase, possibly with more hardware implementations. Since it must be secret for its own protection, this means a bleak future for media compatibility with open-source Linux and obsolescence for older non-DRM players.

2. What are the factors that will prevent people from using or adopting this in the future?
Customer resistance may be an issue, as may the cost of implementing compared to actual reductions in piracy losses (that is, EXTRA copies sold, not pirate copies prevented). Technical issues my play a wider part, in preventing introduction of methods which would be incompatible with a significant legacy userbase.

3. How common/widely practiced will DRM become in the future?
Where it can be, it will be, though fortunately, it seems that timeshift is still condered to be a legitimate use of broadcast content.

4. Basically, how does DRM work?
While some consider any form of licence to be DRM, the usual context seems to be encoded media, with a decoding player that enforces restrictions according to the licence.

#9

On a xp pro sp2 box as admin go start run gpedit.msc look around in there
microsoft already has has DRM sewed into windows xp. Windows media player constantly phones home if your on the web and have a dvd playing or a music cd playing. Look at it like this we all want to have things but don’t have the money for all the things we want (so we copy them). The companies creating
what is being copied are losing money when people are copying and not buying.
we all have things we didn’t pay for but the people losing the revenue (money) want to put a stop to it ALL and are even going to try to put DRM directly
into the hardware cd/dvd drives and motherboards. With that said we can all use older hardware and everyone knows that any software can and will be hacked to bypass DRM.

#10

http://www.againsttcpa.com
http://www.microsoftmonitor.com/archives/009322.html

visit these 2 links the future of computing as we know it is dismall unless the consumers speak up with thier $$$$$$$$.DRM works with a digitally encrypted wrapper
which protects content providers copyrights and etc forcing you to contact an online server for a “license” some are free some cost $$$