Digital Rights Management: What the Consumer Wants

Abstract

Digitization of content as well as the increasing piracy of content such as music, films or software demands appropriate protection against unauthorized access and use. Therefore, and in order to be successful, the management of rights of such content, often known under the umbrella term Digital Rights Management (DRM), is becoming increasingly important for today's digital asset managers. In the first part of this article, we provide a short introduction to DRM by outlining the entities, the various technologies used as well as usage restrictions that come with DRM. We also provide an example of a DRM used for movie downloads. What digital asset managers also have to understand are the consumer needs of those systems, in terms of technology requirement as well usage restrictions. The second part of this article provides first empirical results about the consumer acceptance of DRM systems. We outlined which technologies, as well as usage restrictions, which come with digital content, )