DRM v No DRM
DRM v No DRM
by
Leo Hunter
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is one way publishers of any digital content may use to protect digital content they own or obtain by licensed and or assigned copyright in any digital format from any illegal and unlawful use such as piracy for example. This article is an apolitical overview of the main reasons why DRM exists and what writers and authors should or must do leading up to publication of their masterpieces (manuscripts) in the context of their copyright protection.
Writer :-
If you're a professional writer, you will either be employed to write whatever on your employer's behalf in exchange for a payment, or a self-employed freelance writer drafted in to write on a temporary or one-off basis in exchange for a payment. That is you're paid to write whether your work is published or not; although not usually the named author. You can therefore safely bet your last penny on the fact your employer or freelance client owns copyright over all you write on their behalf from their perspective (under their strict direction/s). My advice is to double-check your written employment contract; if you have one, and Employment Law re intellectual property etc before agreeing to write, simply because many astute employers or clients will not express who actually owns copyright. They rely on implied written or verbal contract terms and conditions instead to determine copyright ownership in the context that by law you're deemed/assumed to actually know your rights, or at least should know.
You can also safely bet employers or freelance clients will tie you down strictly to a non-disclosure clause by expressed and reciprocally implied terms and conditions to assert and preserve their copyright over your work (writing) via Employment Law etc before and after publication. It's therefore them or their publisher who will determine whether to apply some form of DRM to any digital content or not when all or part of your work is submitted for editorial purposes and or publication. You usually have no say re DRM in these editorial and publication contexts as the employed writer.
They may also assert you use password protection to submit digitised work to them on a regular basis in these times of digitisation to protect all their copyright through all stages of writing, whether completed or not. And what is password protection of digital documents, if not a form of DRM? Check expressed and reciprocally implied contractual terms and conditions yet again before agreeing to write. You're looking for implied clues, such as will they supply you with tools you'll need to write such as a computer and software programs linked to any of their networks, for example? If they do, or even promise to, then some form of DRM by way of password protection of all digitised documents is duly implied.
Another major clue to implied terms and conditions is if you'll have any expressed access to any confidential documents or data they have in their possession or have access to. If you will have, then it's a safe bet you'll be tied to some implied form of DRM as well as an expressed or implied confidentiality/non-disclosure clause.
Author :-
If you're an author on the other hand, you're usually some self-employed freelance writer who submits your copyrighted manuscript projects directly to publishers on a very speculative basis, or via a literary agent. You do so, hoping to enter a publishing contract as the named author of all your published work. You don't get paid until after publication however; unless the publisher offers you a sum of money speculatively in advance to purchase (obtain ownership over) all of your copyright, and or offers you projected royalties speculatively in advance to justify their obtained ownership of the copyright, and you accept any such offers. But what happens to all of your ideas and whatever else you wrote to develop those ideas, even in any sample chapters or pages to submit to them speculatively; particularly if you don't send it to them in digitised documents with some password protection at least (a very basic form of DRM)?
My advice is to double-check the submission processes of your chosen publishers to ensure they accept your digitised work via password protected documents at least. Then ask yourself would you really walk the plank towards torrid waters bound from just above knees upwards, gagged and blindfolded if their submission processes are totally open to abuse by hackers, hijackers, etc?
Remember at all times throughout your writing processes as any author that ideas are not protected by any law. But 80% of your development of ideas is. That actually makes all original ideas in themselves very valuable indeed, to be redeveloped at will when published or obtained by hackers, hijackers etc before approval or publication. So if your intended publisher/s don't use even a simple form of DRM for submission purposes, even if only password protection of digital documents, ask yourself why? So that said hackers or hijackers etc can't secrete any damaging codes behind the password? There's a generally unexplored idea so obvious that it doesn't really need to be published according to the law in modern terms. Reciprocally implied terms and conditions? Double-check them all before taking any expressed or implied risk as an author when you're submitting any part of any of your manuscripts speculatively to any publishers.
If you're lucky enough to find a publisher with at least any such basic submission protection procedures and is kind enough to receipt your submissions promptly, then avoidable anxiety and stress will be partially mitigated re copyright as you wait for a reply from your intended publisher/s. That wait to discover acceptance or rejection of your work may be up to six months, at least. And acceptance subsequently linked to any offer of a publishing contract really is like winning a lottery. But ensure you don't alter your digital master/s of any of those documents or any partial DRM in any way whatsoever after your submission/s. You may need them to establish your copyright ownership as the author in court. So do make a copy of them all for editorial purposes etc instead, then treat any edited copies as masters and so on until actual publication.
General :-
As you can no doubt see from the selective main examples touched on above in both contexts of writers and authors, there are many reasons forms of DRM exist in these modern days of digitisation. I've no doubt you can also imagine in some reasonable foresight that there are numerous other reasons. And l would bet most of the imagined reasons would not be actually linked to piracy, although claimed to be by very skilled hackers and hijackers etc if challenged.
What a thought – hackers, hijackers and pirates fighting it out between themselves in a very disturbing game of soul-sucking ping-pong with illegally and or unlawfully obtained and used property to establish their particular brand of thuggish supremacy. Yes – soul-sucking, because you as an author would effectively be their slave without any remuneration whatsoever. Surely you're head is not stuck in the clouds of deceit to allow that as an established or aspiring author.
No. Don't create circumstances placing yourself into any position where you must walk that plank. Forms of DRM exist, including basic password protection, to assert and protect your copyright and extremely valuable ideas from the onset just as far as reasonably possible, according to the law. That is, until you actually expressly and or reciprocally imply to agree to give any publisher a licence to publish any part of your work, or maybe assign your copyright over to publishers or anyone else whosoever to redevelop your valuable ideas at will to have published.
Good luck with your writing project/s.
