Digital Rights Management and Copyright Protection

Every material created whether it is literary, scientific, artistic, it does not matter in what form it is, digital, analog, print, video, recorded music, and the list could go on are all protected by the copyright law. What that means is it is only the creators that have the right to reproduce and be benefited financially from their work or do whatever they like with the work, like giving a free access to it. Any second or third party will have to get their consent to use the material for any purpose.

Alternatively, there is what is know as "fair use", where a certain amount of the material could be put to use for various purposes. The law dictates how much should be used and how it should be presented, where in most cases it is only few lines that is allowed and the name of the original creator will have to be mentioned or the user will have to use the available mechanisms to tell the users that the material is quoted from another source.

This law known as the Berne Convention was working fine for most cases even if it had never been a 100 percent ironclad method that will make it impossible for anyone to use a copyrighted material at all. Piracy had been around for as long as original works were around and it is its existence that instigated the coming up of a law to protect the rights of the original creators to be the sole beneficiaries of their own creation. One of the main reasons cited is if these creators of material do not have the protection of the law to be duly benefited form they work, they could be discouraged to be creative.

Even if it is difficult, if someone is caught while being benefited financially from a copyrighted material, the law will hand down a stiff penalty, and since many individuals are aware of the existence of the strict law, unless they are certain that they will get away with it, they usually refrain from abusing the law. At the same time, it might be possible to copy a material and distribute it free, for example for the purpose of educating, in learning institutions, and this kind of usage is allowed as long as no one is being benefited from the process financially.