Editorial Reviews:
Book Description
Digital rights management (DRM) is a set of business models and technologies that allows media companies to protect their intellectual property -- and profit in the online world. Cowritten by DRM pioneer William Rosenblatt, this lucid primer outlines the state of DRM today for media executives and IT decision-makers, covering business models (such as subscriptions), core technologies (watermarking, encryption, authentication), standards (such as XrML), vendors, and more.
Customer Reviews:
Review #1: A good attempt at explaining a difficult topic
2003-04-12 
As noted below, DRM consists of legal, technical and business issues and anyone trying to provide an overview of all three has their work cut out for them. Particularly in the early chapters of the book, these authors give it a good try.Unfortunately, the biggest problem with the book is that they try to treat the technology standards and products available on the market, and the market is just changing too quickly for that to be for more than just a superficial look. Too much of what they discuss is already outdated, out-of-business, merged with other offerings or otherwise defunct. Not the fault of the authors, just the nature of the DRM market. This book is: Not a good read if you already understand the basic issues and hope to get more insight into the technology-- go to the web for that. Absolutely a good read if you want to become familiar in a basic way in the underlying issues. Part 1 of the book is really useful reading even to help people who are pretty familiar with the topic structure their thinking.
Review #2: Still waiting for DRM to be explained.
2002-11-11 
The problem with the several texts available on digital copyright or Digital Rights Management is that the topic demands a treatment from at least three different perspectives: namely legal, technical and business. There are several books that try to tackle the topic of digital copyright from a legal viewpoint, and this one is clearly coming from a technical perspective. Legal issues are covered, but rather superficially. More surprisingly the crucial business issues and models that are driving interest in DRM are barely mentioned and there is no dicussion of the business models that are working and those that are not. Disappointingly many of the technical issues are also fudged in a way that will leave non-technical audiences confused, and those who are following technical developments frustrated. The fact is that, technically at least, DRM is an area where approaches, technologies and standards are all in rapid development and the industry has failed to converge on any single direction. This book's effort to offer a comprehensive review of available products means that it risked redundancy before it was published, as many of the companies and technologies have ceased to be relevant. What the world still needs is a book on DRM that reviews the law, discusses the business models (and consumer needs) that are driving developments, and describes fundamental approaches in a way that will remain relevant whatever product Microsoft may impose on us all next year. Unfortunately this book intrigues enough to encourage one to want to know more about DRM, but never really provides the answers.
Review #3: Very good market overview
2002-05-05 
This book combines a business strategist's view of the DRM space with a sound explanation of the underlying technology, and also explains how both have evolved over the past decade. It's rare to find both views in any book, particularly one about an emerging software market. Usually, insights into markets like this book provides require purchasing research reports and speaking one-on-one to industry insiders. So, save yourself $10,000 and three weeks of work ... buy the book.
Review #4: Great reference
2002-04-08
In an ever changing business landscape, I find nothing more comforting than relevant information. As an web application developer I used to always have questions about legality and DRM that nobody could answer. This book has a permananent spot on my shelf!
Review #5: By far the best treatment of DRM I've ever run across
2002-04-05
DRM is a confusing topic, and this one of the clearest expositions of DRM (or most any other technical topic!) that I've ever run across. It demystifies a complex subject with simple straightforward language, describes key vendors and organizes them accurately into categories, and even contains a wealth of useful materials such as checklists to help the customer determine business/technical requirements, evaluate vendors, etc. A must-have for any publisher, intellectual property lawyer, venture capitalist, technology vendor, or consulting firm dealing with digital content distribution or online intellectual property. |
