Once upon a time, in the pre-digital age, buying
music and other audio-visual material was very
simple. We bought records or cassettes, we own-
ed them, we could play them on all players, and
we could lend them out, give them away or even
sell them. We could copy them too, but not very
well.
Our rights as consumers were relatively clear
and could often be enforced.
The new digital carriers, such as CDs, DVDs and
other recording media, are very easy to copy,
and here lies the problem. Creators, artists and
authors cannot be rewarded sufficiently if their
work can be copied freely without restriction
and sold by the copier.
New rules and new regimes are needed to pro-
tect original work in the digital environment.
Limits have to be put on how digital material
may be used. This is done by DRM or digital
rights management as explained before.
However, consumers who pay for digital works
also have, or should have, rights. Sadly, as this
publication shows, consumers actually have
very few rights in the digital environment and
even those rights are under threat from the
development of DRM. They can not remove DRM protection from what the bought. From industry and policy
makers, consumers are continually bombarded
with information telling them what they must
NOT do online. We rarely hear any information
telling consumers what they may do online.
We have to think about DRM, Do we really need it. And is DRM really balance the provider and consumer?
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