Why DRMs Are Bad For Everyone

As digital media continues to rise above analog media, the large media companies are struggling to ensure that their copyrights are not infringed, and their main approach is through the use of DRMs. DRMs (Digital Rights Management) are tags that are put onto media files in order to ensure that they cannot be copied. They have been used on and off for quite a few years now, but they are proving to be very cumbersome to the user. And, perhaps even more importantly, recent studies have shown that the use of DRMs does not actually increase sales at all – in fact sales seem to increase without them.

The main concern for media companies at this time is piracy, for obvious reasons. But piracy will not stop simply because of a DRM. It has to do with the criminal effect. Criminals, who are motivated enough to get past a DRM, will be able to break the law just as before. But the average user, who is not technologically inclined or simply does not want to break the law, will be hindered by the DRM. DRMs are very easy to strip if you have the right software, so criminals will have no problem copying the supposedly protected files. Meanwhile, the average user will be burdened by the inability to copy the media.

The main issue with DRM media is it does not actually give the user any freedom to use what they purchased. For example, a video that is protected with a DRM cannot be burned to a DVD. This could be rather frustrating for the average user who may want to simply watch the video on a DVD player. Another common example comes from ebooks. Most ebooks are protected with a DRM and this makes it impossible to read an ebook on a device without internet connection – there is no way to legally copy the file onto such a device. Yet, ebooks can very easily be pirated, with any DRM stripping program.

If poor user experience is not enough to convince a company to avoid DRMs, the business numbers should. Recent studies have shown that sales actually increase due to the lack of DRMs, despite the ease of piracy. The reason for this is two-fold. First, users who would not be bothered by DRMs will still buy the media, so the company will lose no money here. But, more importantly, any user who wants the freedom of owning his/her own media without a DRM will be more inclined to purchase the media. If the user can buy the media directly from a supplier, they do not risk the viruses or bad copies that are common among pirated media. For many users, this is worth the cost, as long as the media they buy is theirs to own without a DRM.

 In short, DRMs are a cumbersome nuisance for legal users and do not efficiently prevent any piracy. The criminals can not be stopped by a simple DRM, so the only effect is a worse user experience. Media companies need to trust the users and find different means to crack down on piracy. In the end, removal of DRMs will benefit every party involved – even the ever-concerned media companies.