Digital rights management once promised to protect contentpublished on the Internet, but few companies showed an interest. Newopportunities may arise, such as in the enterprise market, but probably notfor several years.
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The slow road to maturity for DRM technology has caused it to lose itsimmediate market opportunities. In 2000, with Napster roaring ahead, DRMpromised to secure rights and revenue for creators and publishersdistributing content over the Internet. However, legal action, rather thanrights-management technology, shut down Napster, and few companies paid attention to DRM,so the market barely developed.
Of the nine DRM vendors Gartner followed in 2000, five small, independentcompanies have run into trouble. Three others are large information technology firms that canafford to maintain their investments in the field, regardless of the poor marketconditions today.
Much of this situation stems from the slow rate of change in business andconsumer media-buying habits. Consumers are not used to paying for contenton the Internet. If they can't find the content they want or if they mustpay for it, they typically use a search engine to try to find free copies.Consumer buying habits must change before DRM can take off. In thebusiness-to-business area, the contracts that have governed B2Binteractions for years are still good enough for content usage. This areahasn't adopted DRM much, either.
DRM will probably never develop as a distinct market. Rather, DRMcapabilities will likely be integrated into larger offerings, such asenterprise software suites and home media servers.
Gartner believes that the clearest opportunities for managing digital rights lie in the enterprisemarket. Collaborative commerce and Web services will lead corporations to putmore of their business online and to interact more often with partners,suppliers and customers over the Internet. Accordingly, corporations willincreasingly feel the need to protect their documents and intellectualproperty through controls such as DRM can provide.
Just as important, the world of business involves structured relationships,so enterprises will more readily accept the controls that a vendor places onits documents and software.
Restrictions such as these pose a big hurdle for acceptance of DRM by consumers,since it will keep them from copying and trading content among themselves asfreely as they are able to do today.
(For a related commentary on digital rights management issues, see gartner.com.)
Entire contents, Copyright © 2002 Gartner, Inc. All rights reserved. The information contained herein represents Gartner's initial commentary and analysis and has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Positions taken are subject to change as more information becomes available and further analysis is undertaken. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof.