What is digital rights management and how does it work?

A digital rights management (DRM) system, using a secret key, encrypts content to make it unwatchable so that only somebody who has the key can decrypt and watch it. But that key, like all digital information, is easy to copy and share so on its own it is not sufficient to protect the content.

To bolster overall content protection, business rules were added that define DRM policies, such as when and how the keys can be used. The enforcement of those rules upon the devices used to consume the content came next and with it arrived our current digital rights management definition.

Since the dawn of the digital age, copyright holders have been attempting to address the piracy problem. This was initially software-based, i.e., trying to stop people copying computer games and operating systems.