Tables of Contents
Introduction3
Research3-5
Findings5-6
Human Failures7-8
Context8
DRM Technologies and Methods8-10
The Security of the Cloud10-13
Conclusion13-14
References15
Society and Digital Rights Management
Recent decades have seen digital technology and digital media transform the entertainment industry and society in general, particularly as a result of on demand streaming and the introduction of mobile applications. But as this transformation has taken place, media corporations have been confronted with a significant problem revolving around the need to protect the security of their copyrighted materials. It is essential for these businesses to be able to easily and quickly deliver their media to the consumer while maintaining its security. At the same time, consumers have to be concerned about the security of their personal information, and in particular their financial information. With the increase in premium content provided to computers, tablets and smart phones by streaming or download, these problems are expected to grow worse in the future. Premium content describes not only standard television series and movies made available later via the Internet, but also programs and movies made specifically for the Internet, such as the ones found on Amazon, Google or Netflix (Steel, 2015). Statistics show that in 2012 alone, the production of such premium content rose by nearly 10%. In the years since then, the rate of increase has been even greater. The purpose of this essay is to consider how these changes (both in technology and in consumer behavior) will affect businesses (service providers and electronics companies) and consumers, and in particular how business can protect both itself and consumers in the future. Finally, the use of cloud computing to enhance the protection of digital content and information will also be considered.
Research
One of the principal concerns for media corporations around the world is pirated content. Every year, hundreds of millions of people go on the Internet for the purpose of downloading pirated movies, music or other content. For this reason, premium content providers have become interested in preventing the pirating of the content they produce and provide. The graphic below shows the rapid rise in illegal file sharing.
They are also very concerned about protecting their customers private information. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) estimates that piracy of films in the United States costs the motion picture industry roughly $3 billion every year. And this does not include the piracy going on throughout the rest of the world, which is harder to estimate. But for some reason, most Americans don't seem to believe that it is a serious matter if they share a television program or movie with someone else. In fact, surveys have revealed that 7 out of 10 people think that it is perfectly reasonable to share content they have purchased with others. Even the prosecution of consumers who do this has failed to make a significant dent in this activity (Porter, 2016). The following graphic examines these attitudes.
Oddly, even though consumers frequently have no problem with stealing or sharing content purchased from media corporations, they are quite concerned about the same corporations protecting their own information and privacy. In fact, such concerns have led more than 80% of those using the Internet to take at least minimal steps to reduce the chance they are being monitored by others, including their own bosses. However, these steps are not always sufficient to ensure privacy. 20% of people have had their email or social media hacked at least once. 10 % have had vital personal information stolen, such as their Social Security number or credit card number (Armental, 2015). Given these facts, it's perfectly reasonable for consumers to be concerned about how their private information is being collected, stored and protected. In fact, the vast majority of people when questioned felt that our present laws covering the protection of personal information are insufficient and need to be enhanced.
Findings
As a result of the above, businesses have to do more to address the growing concerns about how digital content can be protected during its use, distribution and production. In addition, they have to ensure that any steps they take to protect this content does not produce a system that makes it difficult for consumers to easily, quickly and intuitively access that content. In other words, consumers simply want access to their content without having to concern themselves with the details about how the content is stored, managed or accessed. Furthermore, these businesses need to make sure they are at the forefront of digital rights management (DRM) technology so that they can ensure the protection of their copyrighted material. Any approach to DRM security should be one that does the following:
Offers Reliable Protection for Content
Provides Enforcement Measures for Protecting Content
Safely Stores and Manages Customer's Content and Information
Reliably Protects Cloud Services and Storage
Protects the Distribution of Premium Content
It should be noted that this final point, the protection of premium content, is a significant one for digital media providers. Regardless of whether such content is being provided via cloud downloads, through mobile devices or to consumers using DVR's, it's essential for media providers to ensure that protected or private information can only be accessed by the intended party at both ends of the process.
Human Failures
Businesses also have to concern themselves with the loss of copyrighted premium content because of actions or activities carried out by their own employees. Any media provider has to ensure that it has rules and provisions in place to ensure that only those individuals who are authorized have access to premium content. Furthermore, media providers also have to be concerned about the loss of such content as a result of some individual (or group of individuals) gaining access to the content of a digital device that has been lost or stolen. As the following shows, the loss of devices accounts for roughly 13% of all data lost.
Thus, businesses providing content and businesses that produce digital devices both have to be certain that they have in place effective security protocols. Doing this requires that they provide sufficient funding, resources and manpower to ensure that security breaches are prevented from ever happening. Deciding to secure digital content or consumer information after the fact can have an extremely deleterious effect on a business's brand image. Certainly, loss of consumer financial information by a company is always widely discussed in the news media and can be damaging even to major corporations, as has happened recently with Target and Apple (Shaer, 2013).
Context
But as mentioned above, while consumers, businesses and their partners (such as suppliers) would like security to be as reliable and effective as possible, they don't want it to be intrusive or obvious. Certainly, it should not interfere in any way with the effectiveness of either software or the device it operates on. Content users (be they consumers or the business itself) should be able to quickly and easily access their content. Which is why companies specializing in setting up DRM for other companies make every effort to keep the intricacies of the process as unseen and unobtrusive as they can.
In this way, the company can make sure that its concerns about digital content rights are being addressed without the end-user even being aware of it. The fact is, while the average consumer of digital content might be unaware that DRM is a major feature of the content they are watching or using, it is certainly true that content would probably not be made available to them without a system being established to ensure that all of the relevant rights of everyone involved in the process are being protected.
DRM Technologies and Methods
DRM refers to a range of technologies that have been created to protect the rights of content providers and manage access to the digital content they produce. The nature of this DRM technology and its effectiveness helps to determine how content is viewed by consumers and stored by providers. While there is a good deal of discussion in the media about the vulnerability of digital content, there are many robust approaches and methods that allow content providers to be relatively sure about the protection of their digital rights (Levy, 2007). Furthermore, DRM technologies have reached the point where providers can customize rules governing how the content is accessed. For example, a content provider can dictate that the end-user will be unable to make a copy of the provided content in any way.
Some of the approaches that businesses can use to protect content (as well as consumers) include the following:
Enhanced Transparency
Since the entire point of DRM is to place limitations on use of content, the end-user should be presented with such limitations on a regular basis. For example, these limitations could be represented by restricting how many times a file can be accessed or copied, as well as by restricting the number of devices on which that content can be shared.
Hand-in-hand with this, content providers should ensure that messages are built into the content so that end users are entirely aware of just what the limitations are and how companies are enforcing them. The reason for this necessity is that even though businesses might assume that there customers (as well as other end-users) are completely aware of what the limitations are, they often are not. Eliminating any misunderstandings over just what these end-users can do with the content and why limitations are in place will help consumers better understand these points so that they don't blame the content provider for any necessary restrictions.
For content providers, the ability to fully control the distribution of their content is vital to the ultimate success of their business model. Nevertheless, the companies manufacturing the devices on which content is accessed must avoid putting in place rules that are too difficult to follow and obey or impossible to enforce. Another important aspect of this problem is that companies must have in place effective rules governing how content can be used in the workplace itself.
Effective Security
The confidence that content providers can have in the protection of their digital content depends on the extent to which the companies manufacturing both digital software and digital devices have in place effective measures to prevent any circumventing of content DRM safeguards. In addition to this, content providers must be certain that outsiders will be unable to obtain data that would permit them to decrypt protected content.
For example, for information and data contained on the cloud these companies can choose to include features that allow both consumers and providers to know when an issue regarding security has occurred. They can also install software that precludes the possibility of off-site hacking. Furthermore, they can enhance monitoring by providing specific keys for each individual user so that they know who is accessing the content in every case. They can also prioritize the content, making sure that certain features that contain the most sensitive data (such as client financial information) are more difficult for users to access than others.
The Security of the Cloud
Despite the generally held idea that cloud storage is more vulnerable, this approach can be a very effective method for businesses that want to provide secure and discrete access to data or content for their customers (Moss & Zierick, 2011). In fact, it offers a range of important advantages for businesses, such as improved content control and enhanced flexibility when using that content. It also makes it easier to alert content providers (or content users) whenever there is a potential problem or suspicious activity. This will allow reactive security responses and fixes to be implemented (if necessary). The following shows how the concerns about cloud security are expressed.
In addition, the use of cloud-based technologies allows businesses to offer a number of additional services and features that they could not provide before. For instance, they will have the capability of permitting shared content, enhancing backup and recovery capabilities and improving the transition from one digital device to another when using content. The reason for this enhanced capability is that users will be able to access their data in a direct and unencrypted way and will be permitted to edit that data from any location or on any device of their choice.
Before consumers are willing to move to cloud storage, they need more than just information about its benefits, they need to believe that it has a high degree of security. For many businesses, it's a bit disquieting to have their information stored off location where they can't physically get to it. Using cloud storage means that data is no longer in the same building when both need it. While most corporations (as well as consumers) are becoming more accepting of the concept of the cloud, the fact that they don't necessarily have the degree of control over their data (especially when it comes to security) that they are accustomed to makes some of them uncomfortable. It is necessary to show customers and businesses that they (and their authorized representatives) will be able to reliably and easily access their data at any time of day.
Businesses that provide cloud services (either to individuals and businesses) have to do this in a manner that reassure their various clients about the level of overall security for cloud storage. They also have in place strict security to limit information access via the Internet to only those individuals authorized by the client. Accomplishing effective security requires implementing an overall security protocol that covers every type of device and form of content. Obviously, one of the principal means by which vendors can do this is to fully encrypt all of the data and effectively password protect the security systems. One alternative approach is for the vendor in question to allow users to establish and maintain their own specific security measures and protocols within the server. This has both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, it will permit that particular users data to be more securely maintained, since he or she will be the only one able to access that data. On the other hand, the amount of help and advice that the cloud service could offer to such customers would be significantly reduced. For instance, they would not be able to assist the user should the user need to recover their password. This shifts a great deal of the responsibility for protecting data and stored content from the provider and onto the user.
Ensuring Quality DRM Protection
There are number of things that businesses can do in order to ensure high quality DRM for their clients and for themselves.
Careful Monitoring: They should keep an eye out for any potential issues that might make it easier for hackers to gain access to important data. Given that online services are more vulnerable to hackers than systems that are not on a network, such online activity should be closely monitored for problems. In addition, anti-tamper software is particularly important for devices employing open platforms.
Optimization: These businesses should also be careful to balance the need for reliable security with the necessity of maintaining efficient performance.
Customizing the Security: Cookie cutter approaches to security tend to overlook the specific needs of a business or client. Thus, security measures should be carefully designed to concentrate on the requirements of the specific service or application.
Critical Reviews and Maintenance: Businesses should frequently review the security levels and access provided for users (as well as the various devices they employ in their work). Access that is no longer needed (such as for retired employees) should be canceled.
In conclusion, the goal of this essay was to examine the points that need to be considered when dealing with DRM issues. In addition, recommendations were made regarding techniques that businesses can use to improve security for activities in which they are transferring or sending digital data or content. The necessity of ensuring the protection of data stored on the cloud is also clear. Of course, there is no way to achieve such a thing as unbeatable security. Regardless of what measures businesses take to protect data stored on the cloud or on distributed media (CDs or Blu-rays), there is always the chance that the actions of a hacker or a careless employee could cause a breach. But as pointed out above, there are many things that can be done to minimize the chance of such breaches occurring. It is also possible to take steps that will reduce the impact of such breaches when they happen. At the same time, it is essential for businesses to avoid making the security measures so difficult to use and onerous that they interfere with the efficiency of employees.
References
Armental, M. (2015, Sep 16). Second Russian man pleads guilty in hacking conspiracy; years long crime spree targeted payment-processing companies and retailers. Wall Street Journal (Online).
Levy, C. (2007). DRM demystified. Streaming Media Magazine, , 48-52,54,56. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/212532546?accountid=2163
Moss, H., & Zierick, J. (2011). Cloud providers will be better at security than you can ever be. Network World, 28(4), 27-28. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/854279445?accountid=2163
Porter, S. (2016, Mar 01). RIAA calls more students on illegal downloads. University Wire Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1769264595? Accountid=2163
Shaer, M. (2013, Feb 19). Apple joins facebook in ranks of the recently hacked. The Christian Science Monitor Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1288928040?accountid=2163
Steel, E. (2015). Netflix, amazon and hulu no longer find themselves upstarts in online streaming. New York Times Company.
