In our daily life, we may encounter a lot of restrictions when we enjoy digital media contents or playing games such as some media files are only accessible by a specific player and some games are only playable on a specific device. The common reason of these limitations is that most of these files or games are DRM protected so as to prevent illegal piracy or distribution. Are you familiar with DRM? If not, you can read this article to learn more about it. It covers the topics about what is DRM and how DRM works and so on.
Part 1. What is DRM and DRM Technology
DRM is an abbreviation of digital rights management or digital restrictions management which is created to protect the digital media contents such as software, games, videos, music, eBooks from being pirated and control some devices like CD, DVD, printers, mobile devices etc. to access some specified services only and it was first developed in 1980s. This is very helpful for content authors and device manufacturers. However, it also brings so much trouble and inconvenience for the paid legal users, so there are a lot of people are against DRM and it didn’t stop piracy much actually. In Octabor 1998, American enacted the DCMA ( Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to outlaw the actions of removing DRM from copyright protected and it has accelerate the development of DRM technology greatly.
DRM Technology means the program used to protect the copyright. There are thousands of different DRM techniques with different forms, almost each company has its own DRM system. The most important DRM technologies are Apple FairPlay, Microsoft PlaysForSure, PlayReady, Windows Media DRM, Windows Genuine Advantage , Content Scrambling System (CSS) and AACS (Advanced Access Content System) for DVD and Blue-ray, Google Widevine, Adobe Primetime, and CMLA-OMA DRM schemes and so on.
Part 2. How Does Digital Rights Management Work
Although there are different DRM systems, they work basically the same way. Take the FairPlay DRM for example, it use the AES algorithm in combination with MD5 hashes. In general, it can encrypt the contents and limit the access times, playing devices and so on.
1. First of all, to achieve this target to make DRM work, a Digital Program Authorization Center( also know as DRM server) must be established first.
2. Then it requires to encode the digital content like videos and audio files with a public key and the URL of the DRM Server on the head of media files. The public key is used to prevent the file from editing.
3. Third, when customers buy a DRM file, it will add two private keys, one is saved on the DRM server and the other one with customer info is saved on the downloaded file. With both private keys, the DRM system can verify and authorize the file to be played normally. This looks like a secret handshake between the download file and the DRM server.
Currently the two most widely used DRM systems are Windows media DRM and Apple FairPlay Streaming DRM. Both are developed to protected the media files and devices from its own IOS or Windows ecosystems and they are not compatible with each other. With both DRM, they can limit the access/modification/distribution of the digital media contents and hardware devices for Microsoft and Apple.
Part 3. Is It Legal to Remove DRM and How to Do That
From what has been mentioned above, DCMA was released in USA in 1998, so it maybe not legal to remove DRM for sharing and distribution in some countries. However, for the inconvenience which brought by DRM, more and more people start to complain about DRM. Because DRM is against of the spirit of free software/web/content today. And things seem to start to change in some areas. In 2009, Apple gave up the DRM protection on its iTunes music, so as to enable music lovers to enjoy them in a better personalized way they prefer.
Though there is no DRM protection on iTunes music any more, there are still DRM protections in other digital media files such as the iTunes movies, TV shows, Apple Music, Audiobooks iBooks and so on. They still cause inconvenience for users want to enjoy the media files on non-Apple devices such as Android devices etc. Good news is there nowadays there are many technology companies like DRmare, TunesKit, Aimersoft, Noteburner, M4V Gear, Adoreshare have developed kinds of perfect DRM media software to help users to strip DRM and make it easier to enjoy the digital media files freely. For instance, I have used DRmare M4V Converter personally to break the DRM protection from the videos and then convert them to other formats of videos. It stands out for its neat design and great performance which can losslessly convert videos in a fastest speed. Users who interested in it can simply download it to have a try.
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