Why DRM is important?
By Xavier
20 Jan
Enterprise digital rights management is the technology that is currently being widely used by global organisations to control and manage the accessibility of the company's copyrighted digital content. This ensures that the copyright holder's or content creator's rights are safeguarded, preventing unauthorized or illegal modification and distribution of the content.
Digital rights management software is being widely used these days as the scope of digital content has expanded, with constant peer-to-peer file exchanges, online piracy, and the many torrent sites in play. With DRM solutions, a company can protect its content from cybersecurity crimes.
Other than protecting a company's customer data, digital rights management solutions also help in displaying and enforcing compliance, improve the efficiency of operations, and prevent any downtime. This is a highly effective technology that has enabled artists, musicians, filmmakers, authors, and other content creators to control and decide what someone can do with their digital content.
How Does It Work?
DRM Solutions will ensure that the digital media that is uploaded, like a video or audio file, is securely encrypted and packaged when stored and transmitted. Here, the sole aim is to deliver the digital media to those users and devices that are authorised to play it back.
If the proper digital rights management solutions are in place, the video player will decrypt and play the video or audio only if the user and device have the right authorisation. This prevents anyone from illegally downloading or streaming the media content into another device or using it for any other purpose.
Unauthorised sharing, distribution, and modification of any digital content can be covered by numerous copyright infringement laws. However, monitoring such illegal activity over the internet is a humongous task, and not easily achievable. This issue is what is primarily addressed by DRM solutions.
DRM usually employs the use of codes that prevents the content from being copied or limit the number of times a device can access the content. Additionally, content owners can also make use of applications to monitor and manage what users can do with their media, restricting their usage, disabling their authorisation, or encrypting the content. If the media content is encrypted, it can only be accessed by those who have the decryption keys.
How Do DRM Solutions Help?
When you set up DRM for your content, then you are able to do the following:
- Prevent users from saving, editing, sharing, downloading, printing, taking screenshots and screengrabs, etc. of their media content.
- Set a timeframe for the media, through which you can allow users to access the media for a specific time period. You can even limit the number of times a user accesses the media.
- Limit the accessibility of devices, locations, IP addresses, etc. in accessing the content.
- Insert watermarks, images, etc. to display the ownership and identity of the content creator.
Today, you can avail of different DRM systems to encrypt and secure your content. However, when considering compatibility with popular devices and browsers, the prominent industry leaders are Google’s Widevine, Microsoft’s PlayReady, and Apple’s Fair Play.
When to Use DRM?
DRM solutions can be used by any individual or company who wishes to protect their digital media assets. The basic scenarios where having a DRM system is helpful are the following:
- When your business is subscription-based, where user authentication is a significant element.
- If you are a content creator who creates original media content.
- When you license other content, especially those that are prominent OTT releases.
- When your content is made in live environments, which can potentially be shared on social media without your consent.
- If you are worried about your content being pirated and distributed illegally.
Having the best DRM software in tow will provide a multi-layered and integrated solution to safeguard a company's digital data, especially if they are from the entertainment and media industry. Verification of users and devices and tracking digital devices can also help businesses to stay safe from external and internal threats.
The best DRM software one can implement include Tabnova's DRM solutions, which have a comprehensive set of infrastructure & support that is both accessible and affordable.