The Present and Future of Digital Rights Management

Abstract

Over the last few years, Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems have become increasingly successful in various areas of digital content production and distribution. While DRM-related technology research has achieved a certain degree of maturity since the 1990�s, the legal framework surrounding DRM systems remains in flux and is fiercely debated. This keynote speech first provides an overview of the various ways by which digital content is protected in a DRM system. The intertwining protection by technology, contracts, technology licenses and anti-circumvention regulations may lead to a new property right making copyright protection obsolete. However, there is a danger of over-protection: questions of fair use and other limitations to traditional copyright law have to be addressed. If competition is not able to solve this tension between the interests of content providers and the interests of users or the society at large -- which seems doubtful at least -- it is the law that has to provide a solution. The speech presents the different approaches legislatures in Europe and in the United States have adopted. Second, the speech discusses recent developments at the intersection of DRM and the law, in particular the discussions about DRM interoperability, patents on DRM technology, DRM standards, and the relationship between DRM and levy systems as well as between DRM and trusted computing. Third, the speech analyzes recent scholarship that attempts to solve legal and policy questions surrounding DRM on a technological level. The speech questions whether the tension between technological protection and public values such as fair use, privacy, competition and an innovation commons is really irreconcilable. It argues for a more nuanced approach that explores possibilities and limitations of a value-centered technology design of DRM systems. Only if technology research focuses on such questions, the disapproval of DRM systems by many legal scholars and policy activists could possibly diminish in the long term.