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DRM: Digital Rights or Digital Restrictions?

David Chisnall
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David Chisnall

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Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/29/10
By on January 29, 2010 No Comments

Don't ignore old versions of OS X.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/28/10
By on January 28, 2010 No Comments

Exceptions should be exceptional.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/27/10
By on January 27, 2010 No Comments

Explore the runtime system.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/26/10
By on January 26, 2010 No Comments

Copy design patterns from Cocoa.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/25/10
By on January 25, 2010 No Comments

Profile with Instruments.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/22/10
By on January 22, 2010 No Comments

Expose system services.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/21/10
By on January 21, 2010 No Comments

Always read the release notes for new OS X versions.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/20/10
By on January 20, 2010 No Comments

Broadcast events with notifications.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/19/10
By on January 19, 2010 No Comments

Port your code with GNUstep.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/18/10
By on January 18, 2010 No Comments

Use CoreAnimation for caching.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/15/10
By on January 15, 2010 No Comments

Don't recreate standard features.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/14/10
By on January 14, 2010 No Comments

Don't forget NSCell.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/13/10
By on January 13, 20102 Comments

Plan for code reuse.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/12/10
By on January 12, 2010 No Comments

Remember the C in Objective-C.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/11/10
By on January 11, 2010 No Comments

Separate interfaces and implementations.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/8/10
By on January 8, 2010 No Comments

Think about localisation early.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/7/10
By on January 7, 2010 No Comments

Read the Human Interface Guidelines.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/6/10
By on January 6, 2010 No Comments

Don't optimise yet.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/5/10
By on January 5, 2010 No Comments

Put controllers in nib files.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/4/10
By on January 4, 2010 No Comments

Don't write code.

Cocoa Tip of the Day, 1/1/10
By on January 1, 2010 No Comments

Use Distributed Objects for local network communication.

Data Strategy

Like this article? We recommend
Data Strategy

David Chisnall examines DRM and concludes that DRM restricts copying to the detriment — rather than advantage — of the content producers. Regulating the use of media content is really an attempt to hold back the development of technology.

DRM—Digital Rights Management to its advocates, Digital Restrictions Management to its detractors—seems to be added to all forms of media these days. It’s usually billed as an anti-piracy mechanism, but in reality it comes down to control. Copy protection, the predecessor to DRM, was intended to control illegal copying. DRM expands on this strategy by attempting to control what you can do with media. This extends the rights granted by copyright beyond exclusive distribution to regulation of use.

How DRM Works

At its heart, DRM is a cryptographic system. The medium protected by DRM must be encoded in some way to prevent it from being played without the consent of the DRM system. In practical terms, this means that it must be encrypted. A traditional cryptographic system involves sending a message from one person to another without an attacker being able to intercept the message. In the case of DRM, the recipient of the message and the attacker are the same person. As you can imagine, this arrangement presents some difficulties for designers of DRM systems. The most common solution is to require a closed system.

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