表达你的权利
Just as the deadbolt on your front door can be picked by a burglar, digital protection can be broken by a "cracker." The difference is that the cracker will 使用 the Web to invite hundreds of millions of people to come into your (virtual) living room and take what they want. If you’re an owner or distributor of valuable intellectual property — be it music, 电影, animations or any other media asset — this is a direct threat to your bottom line, 也为你的版权的完整性干杯.
But just as digital media delivery has increased the potential damage of 复制right theft exponentially, it also affords huge opportunities for generating revenue. Some recent high-profile mergers in the digital music distribution space attest to this fact, 但这仅仅是个开始. What is required to make digital delivery — via streaming or download — a truly attractive option for content owners is reliable digital rights management solutions.
DRM is an umbrella term for a number of capabilities that allow digital product owners the means to decide under what conditions people can acquire, 使用, 复制, 借出并出售他们的产品. Candidates for protection include software programs, 法律文件, 电子书籍或杂志, 歌曲:歌曲或歌曲集, 电影和其他数字资产.
DRM可以用于许多目的, but when it comes to Internet delivery of audio and visual content, one stands out like a sore thumb — making money. Although MP3 songs are merely part of a much bigger digital media picture, Napster has proven to the world that unfathomable numbers of people will take stuff without paying, and will keep doing it if there are no barriers or legal consequences. Legal action is a deterrent against those facilitating widespread piracy, but it’s not a realistic recourse against the tens of millions of people downloading billions of songs per day without paying. So content owners must fend for themselves.
看电影的时候, TV and music industries hold many of the big content cards, a battle for a piece of the rights-selling and rights-management action is raging between ISPs (cable, 卫星, 无线和DSL), 电话公司, 技术供应商, 网站, 小型内容所有者, 流公司, 和其他人. Content owners and distributors need to understand the components, capabilities and limitations of DRM to navigate the impending marketplace madness.
加密
The first and most basic element of DRM is encryption. 没有加密, content owners are inviting pirates to board the cargo ship before it even leaves the dock. With encryption, they’ll have to go through a heck of a lot of trouble to steal your digital booty.
The intent of encryption is to make piracy too difficult and troublesome for all but the most dyed-in-the-wool crackers to bother. 加密 developers are "in the business of putting up speed bumps,茱莉亚·芬斯特说, 电影副总裁, 视频和广播在互惠, 数字版权管理和电子商务交流中心. 兰吉特·辛格, president and chief operating officer of ContentGuard, 一家位于贝塞斯达的数字版权管理公司, Md., describes DRM encryption as "keeping the honest people honest."
加密 is exceedingly difficult to break. (见侧栏，第40页.)经常, 然而, people break into systems by stealing passwords and other "decryption codes" — not by actually "breaking" the technology in its entirety. 例如, the best-known encryption "crack" is the breaking of the CSS encryption scheme 使用d to lock down DVD content. But that crack was only possible beca使用 one of the CSS licensees inadvertently neglected to encrypt the decryption key. It was not the result of breaking encryption, but the result of password theft — a much easier proposition for a pirate.
There are other ways thieves can steal keys for decryption. 例如, beca使用 a personal computer must send unencrypted data to output devices such as audio cards and video boards, crackers have written a number of "dummy" drivers that act like audio or video boards but whose real purpose is to write the unencrypted content to disk. Microsoft has implemented its "Secure Audio Path" feature into Windows, allowing content distributors to disable this. But unfortunately, Secure Audio Path is not in Windows NT, Windows 95, or Windows 98. Until the world upgrades to Windows ME/2000/XP, this vulnerability will remain widespread.
There will always be crackers who break systems, and there will always be corporations trying to stay one step ahead of them. DRM solutions are based on the principle that if it’s hard enough, most people won’t bother to steal – they’ll just pay.