DRM became a major concern with the growth of the Internet in the 1990s, as piracy crushed
CD sales and online video became popular. It peaked in the early 2000s as various countries attempted to respond with legislation and regulations and dissipated in the 2010s as
social media and
streaming services largely replaced piracy and content providers elaborated next-generation business models.
Early efforts In 1983, the Software Service System (SSS) devised by the Japanese engineer Ryuichi Moriya was the first example of DRM technology. It was subsequently refined under the name
superdistribution. The SSS was based on encryption, with specialized hardware that controlled decryption and enabled payments to be sent to the copyright holder. The underlying principle was that the physical distribution of encrypted digital products should be completely unrestricted and that users of those products would be encouraged to do so. An early DRM protection method for computer and
Nintendo Entertainment System games was when the game would pause and prompt the player to look up a certain page in a booklet or manual that came with the game; if the player lacked access to the material, they would not be able to continue. An early example of a DRM system is the
Content Scramble System (CSS) employed by the
DVD Forum on
DVD movies. CSS uses an
encryption algorithm to encrypt content on the DVD disc. Manufacturers of DVD players must license this technology and implement it in their devices so that they can decrypt the content. The CSS license agreement includes restrictions on how the DVD content is played, including what outputs are permitted and how such permitted outputs are made available. This keeps the encryption intact as the content is displayed. In May 1998, the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed as an amendment to US
copyright law. It had controversial (possibly unintended) implications. Russian programmer
Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested for alleged DMCA infringement after a presentation at
DEF CON. The DMCA has been cited as chilling to legitimate users; such as security consultants including
Niels Ferguson, who declined to publish vulnerabilities he discovered in
Intel's secure-computing scheme due to fear of arrest under DMCA; and blind or visually impaired users of
screen readers or other
assistive technologies. In 1999,
Jon Lech Johansen released
DeCSS, which allowed a CSS-encrypted DVD to play on a computer running
Linux, at a time when no compliant DVD player for Linux had yet been created. The legality of DeCSS is questionable: one of its authors was sued, and reproduction of the keys themselves is subject to restrictions as
illegal numbers. More modern examples include
ADEPT,
FairPlay,
Advanced Access Content System. The
World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty (WCT) was passed in 1996. The US
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), was passed in 1998. The European Union enacted the
Information Society Directive. In 2006, the lower house of the French parliament adopted such legislation as part of the controversial
DADVSI law, but added that protected DRM techniques should be made interoperable, a move which caused widespread controversy in the United States. The
Tribunal de grande instance de Paris concluded in 2006, that the complete blocking of any possibilities of making private copies was an impermissible behaviour under French copyright law.
2000s The broadcast flag concept was developed by Fox Broadcasting in 2001, and was supported by the
MPAA and the U.S.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC). A ruling in May 2005 by a
United States courts of appeals held that the FCC lacked authority to impose it on the US TV industry. It required that all HDTVs obey a stream specification determining whether a stream can be recorded. This could block instances of fair use, such as
time-shifting. It achieved more success elsewhere when it was adopted by the
Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB), a consortium of about 250 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, and regulatory bodies from about 35 countries involved in attempting to develop new digital TV standards. In January 2001, the Workshop on Digital Rights Management of the
World Wide Web Consortium was held. On 22 May 2001, the European Union passed the Information Society Directive, with copyright protections. In 2003, the
European Committee for Standardization/Information Society Standardization System (CEN/ISSS) DRM Report was published. In 2004, the Consultation process of the European Commission, and the DG Internal Market, on the Communication COM(2004)261 by the European Commission on "Management of Copyright and Related Rights" closed. In 2005, DRM Workshops of
Directorate-General for Information Society and Media (European Commission), and the work of the High Level Group on DRM were held. In 2005,
Sony BMG installed DRM software on users' computers without clearly notifying the user or requiring confirmation. Among other things, the software included a
rootkit, which created
a security vulnerability. When the nature of the software was made public much later, Sony BMG initially minimized the significance of the vulnerabilities, but eventually recalled millions of CDs, and made several attempts to patch the software to remove the rootkit.
Class action lawsuits were filed, which were ultimately settled by agreements to provide affected consumers with a cash payout or album downloads free of DRM. Microsoft's media player
Zune released in 2006 did not support content that used Microsoft's
PlaysForSure DRM scheme.
Windows Media DRM, reads instructions from media files in a rights management language that states what the user may do with the media. Later versions of Windows Media DRM implemented music subscription services that make downloaded files unplayable after subscriptions are cancelled, along with the ability for a regional lockout. Tools like
FairUse4WM strip Windows Media of DRM restrictions. The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property by the British Government from
Andrew Gowers was published in 2006 with recommendations regarding copyright terms, exceptions, orphaned works, and copyright enforcement. DVB (
DVB-CPCM) is an updated variant of the broadcast flag. The technical specification was submitted to European governments in March 2007. As with much DRM, the CPCM system is intended to control use of copyrighted material by the end-user, at the direction of the copyright holder. According to Ren Bucholz of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), "You won't even know ahead of time whether and how you will be able to record and make use of particular programs or devices". The normative sections were approved for publication by the DVB Steering Board, and formalized by
ETSI as a formal European Standard (TS 102 825-X) where X refers to the Part number. Nobody has yet stepped forward to provide a
Compliance and Robustness regime for the standard, so it is not presently possible to fully implement a system, as no supplier of device certificates has emerged. In December 2006, the industrial-grade
Advanced Access Content System (AACS) for
HD DVD and
Blu-ray Discs, a process key was published by hackers, which enabled unrestricted access to AACS-protected content. In January 2007,
EMI stopped publishing audio CDs with DRM, stating that "the costs of DRM do not measure up to the results." In March, Musicload.de, one of Europe's largest internet music retailers, announced their position strongly against DRM. In an open letter, Musicload stated that three out of every four calls to their customer support phone service are as a result of consumer frustration with DRM.
Apple Inc. made music DRM-free after April 2007 and labeled all music as "DRM-Free" after 2008. Other works sold on iTunes such as apps, audiobooks, movies, and TV shows are protected by DRM. A notable DRM failure happened in November 2007, when videos purchased from
Major League Baseball prior to 2006 became unplayable due to a change to the servers that validate the licenses. In 2007, the European Parliament supported the EU's direction on copyright protection.
Asus released a soundcard which features a function called "Analog Loopback Transformation" to bypass the restrictions of DRM. This feature allows the user to record DRM-restricted audio via the soundcard's built-in analog I/O connection.
Digital distributor GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) specializes in
PC video games and has a strict non-DRM policy.
Baen Books and
O'Reilly Media, dropped DRM prior to 2012, when
Tor Books, a major publisher of science fiction and fantasy books, first sold DRM-free
e-books. The
Axmedis project completed in 2008. It was a European Commission Integrated Project of the FP6, has as its main goal automating content production,
copy protection, and distribution, to reduce the related costs, and to support DRM at both B2B and B2C areas, harmonizing them. The INDICARE project was a dialogue on consumer acceptability of DRM solutions in Europe that completed in 2008. In mid-2008, the
Windows version of
Mass Effect marked the start of a wave of titles primarily making use of
SecuROM for DRM and requiring authentication with a server. The use of the DRM scheme in 2008's
Spore led to protests, resulting in searches for an unlicensed version. This backlash against the activation limit led
Spore to become the most pirated game in 2008, topping the top 10 list compiled by
TorrentFreak. However,
Tweakguides concluded that DRM does not appear to increase video game piracy, noting that other games on the list, such as
Call of Duty 4 and ''
Assassin's Creed, use DRM without limits or online activation. Additionally, other video games that use DRM, such as BioShock, Crysis Warhead, and Mass Effect'', do not appear on the list. Many mainstream publishers continued to rely on
online DRM throughout the later half of 2008 and early 2009, including
Electronic Arts,
Ubisoft,
Valve, and
Atari,
The Sims 3 being a notable exception in the case of Electronic Arts. Ubisoft broke with the tendency to use online DRM in late 2008, with the release of
Prince of Persia as an experiment to "see how truthful people really are" regarding the claim that DRM was inciting people to use illegal copies. Although Ubisoft has not commented on the results of the "experiment", Tweakguides noted that two
torrents on
Mininova had over 23,000 people downloading the game within 24 hours of its release. In 2009,
Amazon remotely deleted purchased copies of
George Orwell's
Animal Farm (1945) and
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) from customers'
Amazon Kindles after refunding the purchase price. Commentators described these actions as
Orwellian and compared Amazon to
Big Brother from
Nineteen Eighty-Four. Amazon CEO
Jeff Bezos then issued a public apology. FSF wrote that this was an example of the excessive power Amazon has to remotely censor content, and called upon Amazon to drop DRM. Amazon then revealed the reason behind its deletion: the e-books in question were unauthorized reproductions of Orwell's works, which were not within the
public domain and that the company that published and sold on Amazon's service had no right to do so.
2010present Ubisoft formally announced a return to online authentication on 9 February 2010, through its
Uplay online game platform, starting with
Silent Hunter 5,
The Settlers 7, and ''
Assassin's Creed II. Silent Hunter 5'' was first reported to have been compromised within 24 hours of release, but users of the cracked version soon found out that only early parts of the game were playable. The Uplay system works by having the installed game on the local PCs incomplete and then continuously downloading parts of the game code from Ubisoft's servers as the game progresses. It was more than a month after the PC release in the first week of April that software was released that could bypass Ubisoft's DRM in ''Assassin's Creed II''. The software did this by emulating a Ubisoft server for the game. Later that month, a real crack was released that was able to remove the connection requirement altogether. In March 2010, Uplay servers suffered a period of inaccessibility due to a large-scale
DDoS attack, causing around 5% of game owners to become locked out of playing their game. The company later credited owners of the affected games with a free download, and there has been no further downtime. In 2011, comedian
Louis C.K. released his
concert film Live at the Beacon Theater as an inexpensive (US$5), DRM-free download. The only attempt to deter unlicensed copies was a letter emphasizing the lack of corporate involvement and direct relationship between artist and viewer. The film was a commercial success, turning a profit within 12 hours of its release. The artist suggested that piracy rates were lower than normal as a result, making the release an important case study for the digital marketplace. In 2012, the
EU Court of Justice ruled in favor of reselling copyrighted games. In 2012, India implemented digital rights management protection. In 2012,
webcomic Diesel Sweeties released a DRM-free PDF e-book. He followed this with a DRM-free iBook specifically for the
iPad that generated more than 10,000 downloads in three days. That led Stevens to launch a
Kickstarter project – "ebook stravaganza 3000" – to fund the conversion of 3,000 comics, written over 12 years, into a single "humongous" e-book to be released both for free and through the iBookstore; launched 8 February 2012, with the goal of raising $3,000 in 30 days. The "payment optional" DRM-free model in this case was adopted on Stevens' view that "there is a class of webcomics reader who would prefer to read in large chunks and, even better, would be willing to spend a little money on it." Crowdfunding acted as a
pre-order or alternatively as a
subscription. After the success of
Double Fine Adventure, many games were crowd-funded and many offered a DRM-free version. Websitessuch as
library.nu (shut down by court order on 15 February 2012), BookFi,
BookFinder,
Library Genesis, and
Sci-Huballowed e-book downloading by violating copyright. As of 2013, other developers, such as
Blizzard Entertainment put most of the game logic is on the "side" or taken care of by the servers of the game maker. Blizzard uses this strategy for its game
Diablo III and Electronic Arts used this same strategy with their reboot of
SimCity, the necessity of which has been questioned. In 2014, the
EU Court of Justice ruled that circumventing DRM on game devices was legal under some circumstances. In 2014, digital comic distributor
Comixology allowed rights holders to provide the option of DRM-free downloads. Publishers that allow this include
Dynamite Entertainment,
Image Comics,
Thrillbent,
Top Shelf Productions, and
Zenescope Entertainment. In February 2022, Comixology, which was later under the ownership of Amazon, ended the option of downloading DRM-free downloads on all comics, although any comics previously purchased prior to the date will have the option to download comics without DRM. ==Technologies==