DRM Means Safer Music Aquisition

    According to BBC News, Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is “a class of technologies that allow rights owners to set and enforce terms by which people use their intellectual property”.  DRM can be used to avoid copyright laws and to stop the issue of piracy with music and other types of media.  DRM helps copyright owners and controls who is able to access music and serves as a way to control how this work is shared among the public.  This ensures that people will not take advantage of artists’ work and download so many illegal files that artists’ sales, producers profits, and distributors profits begin to be affected.   Using DRM as a method of control for media is helpful to the consumers of mass media and music, and helps to go against the issues that companies have had in the past and still continue to have with illegal file sharing.  Using DRM also helps to protect from viruses that users might get when downloading illegal content. 
    DRM works in a variety of ways, but according to about.com and netforbeginners, there are four common stages to DRM which include packaging, distribution, license serving, and license acquisition.  Starting with packaging, the DRM encryption keys are built into the software or file.  Distribution is when the files are delivered to the customers, and license serving is where “specialized servers authenticate legitimate users through and Internet connection, and allow them to access the DRM files.”  Lastly, license acquisition is when encryption keys are acquired so the media files can be unlocked. As you can see, DRM uses a variety of techniques to distribute safe files to users, and encryption is a large part of it.
    To me and my downloads, DRM means that I have ways of getting the media I want in a safe manner.  Using P2P sharing is a method to obtaining free music via the Internet, without the risk of infringement and viruses.  Instead of using a client/server model, like Limewire, something like Bearshare or Gnutella is legal and not as risky.  It is important to think about the benefits of using P2P methods, because content owners, consumers and content service providers all benefit.  According to EZDRM, “Consumers can be confident that the digital media they receive is authentic material, and that they have acquired it in a legitimate manner.”  This way, the consumer can be ensured with legal file acquisition and content that will not get them into trouble.