DRM Protection in K12 Education: The Pros and Cons for Publishers and Students

For DRM protection measures to work effectively, publishers use various applications and technologies to implement encryptions, licenses, and passwords on copyrighted material. These protection measures function in a variety of ways such as:

– They prevent users from saving or copy-pasting the contents of the file.

-They prevent users from illegally sharing the content electronically via email or any other way.

– They prohibit the use of screenshots. 

– They can allow access on the basis of factors such as location, IP addresses, devices, etc.

And that’s not all. 

Pros for K12 Publishers

In this decentralized information age,it’s only natural that a publisher would want to protect their content. Here are a few ways DRM protection helps them do that. 

Allows for Licensing: Intellectual property theft can be both intentional or unintentional. DRM technology enables publishers to monitor this by using licenses. These licenses allow publishers to choose who can access the content and when. Only authorized users with a license may be granted access.

Ensures Confidentiality: Identity theft and phishing scams have become a part of daily life. DRM can help protect sensitive information of both organizations and individuals. In the education sector, this could be applied to protect the information of educators or even students.

Protects Ownership: DRM works in addition to copyright law. While copyright law protects the work of a content creator, DRM helps implement this law. With DRM, a content creator (even if they are a publisher as well) can prevent their work from being repurposed or reproduced illegally. It also helps creators track their work and identify where exactly a breach occurred.

Protects Revenue: By allowing only authorized, paying users to access content, DRM ensures that both content creators and publishers are compensated fairly for their efforts in creating and marketing the content. Furthermore, by protecting the ownership of the material, losses can be prevented.

Cons for K12 Publishers

Despite the benefits mentioned above, there are a few reasons why a publisher might choose not to implement DRM protection.

Implementation: DRM can come with a lot of technical complexities, and not every publisher can implement them effectively, without professional help. This could lead to an increase in the cost and effort required to use DRM technologies. 

Apart from that, even if one could afford to implement DRM, the process involves immense collaboration between the DRM provider and software technicians. Any communication gap in this process can lead to a malfunction.

Compatibility: Compatibility issues between numerous software and services can make it difficult for the publisher to effectively protect all their content. If the DRM solution is not compatible across multiple devices, the publisher also stands to lose users.

Lack of Uniformity: Currently there is no uniformity in DRM. Content publishers can pick and choose what they wish to implement and how. While this may appear like a good thing, it affects business on two levels. 

Firstly, as mentioned above, implementing multiple forms of DRM can be a challenge.

Secondly, most end-users do not want to subscribe to multiple DRM providers as this increases the costs they incur, especially after having purchased the content.