Web Extra: DRM: Turning Pirates into Distributors - ' DRM Vs'

DRM Vs. Asset Management

What's the difference between digital rights management and asset management?

Asset management is really part of the value chain for digital content. Before you start to distribute content over the Net and make money from it—or simply distribute it according to your wishes and your policies—you want to be able to manage it. This is a necessary part of the content value chain.

Some have said that DRM can also help firms expand their use of online collaboration in-house, to make digital products and to protect intellectual property from leaking out the door via the Web.

Companies right now say they want to encourage collaboration and yet they also want security. We're faced with these principles every day. You go into meetings and say, "This material is confidential and it will remain in the room." Now you don't want to take it out of the room because you've agreed to abide by the policies of the meeting holder.

The big-picture things with regard to collaboration really have to do with looking at applications of where it can be used inside the organization—places where people need to be able to control the use of content.

That could be limiting pieces of content to certain areas, it could be allowing connections to the consumer of the content and, like a financial institution or any enterprise, the CIO or the CFO may send a very detailed financial report. He or she can then start to specify that all of his or her peers can use all of it and can cut and paste it, and so forth. He or she can also stipulate that, say, the level below the peer group can only view it and can make a printed copy of it. DRM can also let someone say there are only a few individuals who can see it, or part of it, at all. DRM gives you that kind of flexibility.

This kind of control can cut across many organizations inside the company. You also could start to determine the rules by which certain documents can travel between corporations, and ensure that the rules that both sides have agreed to will be applied.