Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Digital Rights Management describes how the owners of music licenses control the way in which those licenses are used when applied to digital media.  Usually, this means limiting a consumer’s ability to make multiple copies of media or controlling what hardware can play or display the media.  There is a great deal of contention regarding Digital Rights Management which many consumers see as preventing "fair use" which was not prevented with previous digital or non-digital media such as music CDs.

DRM is essentially software, and software is something that can run on a personal computer or on a digital device.  Software, also, must be licensed in order to be used legally.  Given that, DRM software must be licensed by the manufacturer of the software, so not all devices or computers can play all media which has a particular brand of DRM software.

When talking about DRM, it helps to think of it as the software plus the "rights" it grants for a given type of media.  Given that software is highly configurable, these rights do not apply to all media identically -- very often, movies are DRMed with different rights than music, and even different music may have different rights associated with it.  This is the root of many objections to DRM in that producers may use what is essentially a no-cost modification to their product to increase its cost to the consumer by, for instance, expiring your right to listen to a "Top 40" after 24 hours while other tracks may be played indefinitely.  This is merely an example, but given that DRM is just software, such restrictions are not out of the question.  Contrariwise, producers are unlikely to release "high-value" products without DRM because they perceive their ability to continue making money from those products as diminished when there is a chance that illegal or "unlicensed" copies may be made of their product.

A "DRM scheme" is the name DRM software plus the rights it typically grants.

iTunes Media Store uses a DRM scheme called "FairPlay" which typically grants the following rights:
- You may authorize up to five devices to play the media.  Examples include a laptop, an iPod, a PC, and a friend’s PC.
- You may play the media indefinitely, it does not expire once you have purchased it.
- You may burn the media to an audio CD.

Many competing services which offer both a la carte and subscription models use a DRM scheme called "PlaysForSure."  As of this writing, the list of services which provide this scheme include:
AOL Music Now, CinemaNow, FYE Download Zone, MSN Music, Musicmatch, Napster, Passalong, URGE, WalMart Music Downloads.  As of this writing about 1000 devices support "PlaysForSure" for some type of DRM.

Given that each service controls the actual rights of the DRM scheme they choose, here is an overview of some typical rights available under a "PlaysForSure" scheme:
- You may purchase music for a fixed a la carte price and play it on any Plays For Sure-enabled device, including a PC, indefinitely.  If you lose your license backup, extra measures may be required to prove you own the media.
- You may stream music while connected to the internet for free.
- You may download music and listen to it for 30 days, renewing the license as often as you like.  (If you fail to renew the license, the music will not play after 30 days).
- You may download music and burn it to CD, but only 40 tracks in a given 30 day period.
- You may download and watch a movie as often as you like for 7 days after which it expires and you must re-purchase it to watch it again.

The Zune DRM scheme is not entirely clear, although will likely resemble some parts of the PlaysForSure model with new rights regarding sharing media.

The rights which appear to be part of the scheme as of this writing are:
- You may share any track with other Zune users wirelessly.  They track expires after three days or three plays, whichever comes first after which they must purchase (or download via subsciption) the track.

None of the above schemes affect music which does not include DRM, such as ".mp3" files.  Users may rip CDs without DRM, although some DRM-enabled programs default to adding DRM to any ripped tracks such that the user must explicitly choose to rip without DRM.  Other files which do not typically include DRM are ".aac", ".m4a", ".ogg", ".wav", ".flac", and ".alac" files.

As of this writing, software tools are available which claim to remove or disable all of the above DRM schemes.  In the United States, posessing or using these tools may be illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).