Perspectives on DRM: Between digital rights management and digital restrictions management
Rafal Kasprowski · Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology · 2010
igital rights management (DRM) is commonly defined as the set of technological protection measures (TPM) by which rights holders prevent the use of digital content they license in ways that could compromise the commercial value of their products.Restrictions on such uses as downloading, printing, saving and emailing content are encoded directly in the products or the hardware needed to use them and are therefore in immediate effect.This automatic deployment challenges the fair use provisions of copyright law, which protect certain uses and let judges determine the outcome of a dispute.This report of a panel session organized by the author at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) presents the DRM issue in four contexts: use restrictions in libraries, the anti-circumvention rules of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), commercial and academic licensing and DRM-free software alternatives.The four panelists were Kristin R.