From copyright to information law-implications of digital rights management

Abstract

Digital Rights Management (DRM) promises to enable a secure electronic marketplace where content providers can be remunerated for the use of their digital content. In the last few years, countless research efforts have been devoted to DRM technologies. However, DRM systems are not only technological phenomena: they pose complex legal, business, organizational and economic problems. This article tries to show that from a lawyer’s perspective some of the innovativeness and potential of DRM can only be understood when one looks at it from a multidisciplinary viewpoint. The article gives 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 could 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 to be doubtful at least-it is the law that has to provide a solution. The legislators in the U.S. and Europe use different approaches to address this problem. By looking at DRM in this way, several patterns can be observed which are characteristic of many areas of Internet law.