Digital Rights Management: A Restrictive Rather than a Defensive Mechanism and the Survival of the 'Fair Use' Doctrine

Abstract

The widespread expansion of the digital era and lawlessness over the Internet has brought forward an array of challenges requiring new laws and infusion of Intellectual Property Rights to curb Copyright dilemmas caused due to widespread piracy of such digital content. With the dawn of the technological revolution coupled with an even greater rise of means to illegally circumvent digital content, it has led to the industry's dependence on Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, which allows content providers to control and restrict access, use, copying or re-distribution of digital content as a means of controlling its illegal usage and governmental power to enforce legal measures for the same, in the name of Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998 (DMCA).The paper focuses on the possible misuse of such laws in the name of copyright protection and also the impact of enforcement of such draconian concepts on consumer expectations and its resultant effects on market demand. It also elucidates on the alteration and expansion of the scope of digital copyright protection boundaries beyond necessary limits, leading to the abuse of DRM technologies and using it to restrict the rights of even the legitimate consumer. Because the interests of the content creator is put forward before that of the content user’s, this has led to clashes between DRM and the “fair use” doctrine, which permits the use of copyrighted material for certain stated legitimate uses, as it puts a major question on what is/is not legitimate use and jeopardizes the rightful entitlement to enjoy purchased content in any way as preferred by the consumer. Finally it focuses on the legal aspects supporting the fair use doctrine and how it is perceived, many a times, to be in contravention with DRM protective laws governed by the DMCA, which poses a threat against valid use and access under the fair use doctrine, hence the reason for the wide spread opposition for its removal and support for the re-instillation of fair use rights.A suggestive solution for the reduction or elimination of such detrimental loopholes, both for the content providers and content users, would be a balanced amalgamation of rights on both sides and determining the point where fair use ends and piracy begins with a view to protect legitimacy of creation restrictions imposed for protection purposes and genuine usage under law.