DRM, law and technology: an American perspective

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of developments in the USA related to digital rights management (DRM) through legal, technological, and market developments in recent years.

This article summarizes recent developments in DRM in two areas. First is the legal landscape, including copyright law developments that apply to digital content and attempts to impose DRM technology through legislation and litigation. Second are recent advances in DRM‐related technology and developments in digital content markets that are based on DRM. In both cases, USA developments are compared with the situation in Europe.

Developments in American copyright law, DRM technology, and digital content markets exert heavy influences on the spread of DRM in Europe, but the legal and technological frameworks are not different, giving rise to incompatibilities.

DRM technologies need to evolve differently for European markets, because they need to exist in the context of fundamentally different copyright law frameworks (e.g., Private Copying) and incumbent technologies (e.g., Conditional Access television).

European readers of this paper should gain an understanding of American DRM technology and its legal context, and how they influence developments in Europe.