Abstract
Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is the tool of choice for preventing the
theft of digital content and thus for ensuring a fair deal for content
providers, network operations, and the paying public. With broadband becoming
increasingly pervasive, telecom operators are pumping ever increasing amounts
of content into customer' s set-top boxes, PDAs, I-pods, and mobile phones in
the quest to ensure customer loyalty. In many cases, the end-user equipment,
such as the set-top box or the mobile phone, itself acts as the medium for
buying, playing, and registering the content. Theft of content nonetheless
remains a serious problem.
DRM is caught in the cross-currents of conflicting interests: content owners
want to maximize royalties, service providers want to enhance margins during
content delivery, and the paying customer wants a hassle-free mechanism that
takes care of their rights of fair use. Several critical issues surrounding
DRM continue to confound the industry as it attempts to meet the needs of all
the interested parties, including the lack of interoperability between various
formats and the ongoing tussle between content providers and operators over
royalties.
In this study, Insight examines the content distribution market by enumerating
the factors that retard or advance DRM. The report details the architectural
constraints imposed on current DRM solutions by wireline, wireless, and
Internet distribution schemes and quantifies the losses due to theft by
peering networks, piracy, and lack of interoperability.
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