Digital Rights Management Systems and Digital Piracy – Archrivals or Unintended Allies?
Digital Rights Management Systems and Digital Piracy – Archrivals or Unintended Allies?

Summary/Abstract: Although Digital Rights Management systems were often triumphantly presented as a panacea for digital piracy they actually did not meet their objective. Moreover, number of products failed on the market because of the use of the DRM systems and various studies indicate that usage of such systems may indirectly act as a positive driver of digital piracy. With their further development DRM systems considerably evolved and became more sophisticated. Combating the piracy is no more their main aim and they became an important part of the competition strategies and business models of many companies. At the heart of this paper lies the question whether DRM technologies inherently include special characteristics which may cause that they act as a driver of digital piracy and whether were those characteristics identified by DRM system implementers and subsequently mirrored in further development of current DRM systems.

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