Digital Rights Managment, or DRM, has been about since the advent of legal music download services - and some could argue that the "copy protection" used in some games predate even this.

The theory behind DRM is simple, you pay for your item and have reasonable uses of it. Be this viewing for a preset amount of time, or not being able to use on more than 1/3/5/10 other devices. DRM is there to protect the media, to prevent a buy once used n times scenario. In theory, it means that the artist/label/studio gets paid their fair due's when their work is sold.

Now, before I go on, I would like to make it clear that I think piracy is wrong. I do not condone it and this article is in no way endorsing or making excuses for it. However, as with the vast majority of those people living in the UK who use iTunes - I have broken copyright law. The law is currently under review here in the UK, to include a "private right to copy" digital items such as CD's and DVD's, but as it stands today - if you make a copy of your media which involves a "format shift" (i.e not an exact clone) then you are breaking UK law. The good news however is that the record labels have "no intention of prosecuting anyone for transferring music they have bought on to their digital music players" according to the chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee inquiry into digital copyright, the Conservative MP John Whittingdale.

Now what does any of this have to do with DRM? It's all quite simple really, and illustrates perfectly the biggest flaw with any DRM system.

Today in the UK there are 24 distinct company's offering legal music downloads. Some, such as iTunes, service only themselves, where as others such as OD2 resell through up to a dozen channel partners. Each of these 24 providers have their own DRM, and they are not compatible with each other. So if I was a member of 3 of these services, and bought an album on one - I would have to rebuy the album to listen to it through another services interface or player.
I would have purchased the item legally, and if it had been a physical good I would have the flexibility to have it on both my iPod and my Zune (seeing as the record labels have no intention of suing me), but as I'm using new technology this flexibility and soon to be right to privately copy my music to another format isn't extended to me. In the record labels eyes (for it is they that are pushing DRM so hard) I should have to buy the album a second time to listen to it on my second player - in other words I am no longer buying the music but the limited license to listen to it on a restricted hardware set.

Now that's just a pain in the arse, and not particularly user friendly, in fact it could be argued that instead of being a step forward the industry has put up a massive barrier which is hampering their legal customers whilst doing nothing to prevent piracy. The reason it isn't hampering piracy is pretty simple to explain too, and it's the reason DRM will never hamper piracy where music is concerned. They still sell CD's. It's really that simple, as long as CD's are still being sold, music will be copied shared and downloaded illegally because they are the easiest format to pirate.

The recording industry in particular is barking up the wrong tree with DRM, simply because those being affected by it aren't the ones looking to get around it. Those of us that happily spend £100 a month in iTunes, aren't likely to be the ones who also want to share that music with the world through eDonkey, and yet it's us that are being punished with bad implementations of restrictive software controls whereas the real pirates - the large scale sharers and even music stores (the old allofmp3.com for example) simply buy a CD and rip it - they get better quality, often for less money. All the hardcore pirates are losing is the convenience of having the music you want to listen to immediatly, which on the whole is fine by them - the don't want the music anyway.

So what's the solution? Well, this isn't that simple. With the music industry, just get rid of DRM. You can replace it with watermarking or some other form of ID'ing a file, but for gods sake just let me play a track I've bought on iTunes to play on my Zune. Stop treating me like a criminal when I'm not the one hocking your files for a quid halfway across the world. Treat the music file like a vehicle, stick a number plate on it to catch me incase I decide to speed - but don't impound it just because I have the ability to mow down your granny.

As for Movie and Game protection, we'll have a look at that some other time.