By
Joan Van Tassel, Van Tassel, PhD, is Associate Professor at National University. She was an award-winning television producer for ten years, wrote on technology
management for The Hollywood Reporter, & consulted with major companies on content management projects and digital rights management.
She is the author of five books on the business of media content in the networked environment. Digital TV Over Broadband (Focal Press),
received the 2001 Cable Center Book Award from the National Cable Center & Museum.
Description
Digital rights management (DRM) is a type of server software developed to enable secure distribution - and perhaps more importantly, to
disable illegal distribution - of paid content over the Web. DRM technologies are being developed as a means of protection against the
online piracy of commercially marketed material, which has proliferated through the widespread use of Napster and other peer-to-peer
file exchange programs.
With the flourish of these file exchange programs, content owners, creators and producers need to have a plan
to distribute their content digitally and protect it at the same time—a seemingly impossible task. There are numerous books dealing with
copyright, eBusiness, the Internet, privacy, security, content management, and related technical subjects. Additionally, there are several
research papers, and almost daily newspaper and magazine articles dealing with digital piracy. However, there are only a few books and
documents that bring these together as a basis for profitable exchange of digital content. Digital Rights Management can help content
providers make money by unifying the confusing array of concepts that swirl around current presentations of DRM in newspapers and business
publications.
Audience:
Decision makers, both technical and non-technical, in the communication content industries, with a focus on commercially developed entertainment
and information. This book will appeal to video/audio/film distribution houses, but go way beyond that to include any corporation distributing
media via the Internet or over IP.
