Digital rights management (DRM): What it is, how it works, and why it matters.

As digital content creation accelerates, protecting assets from misuse and unauthorized access becomes critical. Digital rights management (DRM) offers the structure and technology to secure your intellectual property, maintain compliance, and preserve brand integrity.

In this overview, we’ll explore how DRM works, who uses it, and how to build an effective strategy — especially for organizations managing high-value content at scale.

This post will cover:

• What is digital rights management?
• How DRM works
• Who uses digital rights management
• Digital rights management use cases
• Benefits and challenges of DRM
• Effective DRM strategies
• Tools for digital rights management

Digital rights management (DRM) refers to the policies, processes, and technologies used to control access to digital content. DRM ensures that only authorized users can view, share, or modify protected assets — in accordance with licensing terms or copyright laws.

DRM protects both content owners and corporations as they create and distribute content across multiple channels. DRM often works in tandem with digital asset management (DAM), which organizes, stores, and shares content while maintaining rights information. These are the methods by which a business organizes, stores, retrieves, and shares content in its asset library. Digital assets are typically associated with a license that defines terms and duration of use.

What is an example of digital rights management?

A common example of digital rights management is Apple’s FairPlay system. Apple uses this proprietary DRM technology to protect digital content sold through its ecosystem — including movies, TV shows, apps, and eBooks. Technology has evolved into FairPlay Streaming, a solution that encrypts and manages the delivery of streaming media to Apple devices. It combines encryption, licensing, and device authentication to control how content is accessed and shared.

Why is DRM important for your business strategy?

DRM helps businesses reduce legal exposure, maintain brand trust, and stay compliant with content licensing agreements. Rather than waiting for a copyright violation or legal dispute, companies can proactively embed rights enforcement into their content workflows from the start. Investments in digital rights management tend to pay dividends in protecting business value and brand reputation.

Prioritizing digital rights management helps safeguard your brand, protect your assets, and avoid costly compliance issues.

At a high-level, DRM software works by restricting unauthorized users from accessing, editing, or sharing your secured content. DRM software acts as a platform that prevents unauthorized users from accessing protected files in ways that aren’t approved by the owner.

DRM software helps organizations with the following:

• Enforcement: DRM software enforces digital rights and usage policies put in place to protect each digital asset. It ensures users comply with terms of use defined by content creators or rights holders. DRM helps organizations manage which users can access which assets by managing authentication methods like usernames and passwords or digital certificates. It also manages the creation, distribution, and validation of licenses that grant users access to content or products they have purchased.
• Encryption: DRM software uses encryption techniques to protect digital media and files from unauthorized access or consumption. Encrypted files can only be viewed or accessed by approved, authorized users. DRM software can also embed unique identifiers called watermarks to identify the original file source. These help to prevent unauthorized sharing or content theft.
• Analytics: DRM software can track and record which content is accessed, used, or shared. This information can provide valuable feedback for content creators seeking to perfect the customer experience using insights from user preferences and behaviors.

DRM is widely used by content creators, software providers, corporations, libraries, and other organizations to protect their digital assets. Any organization that creates, collects, and stores digital media or customer data can benefit from protecting secure information and restricting unauthorized access or sharing.

DRM tools play an important role in protecting intellectual property, maintaining and creating revenue-generating content, and safeguarding consumer integrity.

• Media and entertainment: DRM is commonly used to protect digital content like movies, TV shows, music, and eBooks against unauthorized copying, distribution, or sharing. DRM allows content providers to offer media on streaming services and online marketplaces while maintaining copyright compliance and protecting revenue streams.
• Software and gaming: Software and gaming companies use DRM activation keys, license validation methods, and online authentication to prevent unauthorized users, verify legitimacy, and limit improper use or access.
• Publishing and education: Publishers use digital rights management to protect eBooks, scholarly articles, academic papers, and other digital publications. DRM can administrate access controls and limit the number of devices used to view content. In education, DRM enables secure distribution of digital textbooks and course materials with strict copyright compliance.
• Corporate data protection: DRM solutions help maintain sensitive data, confidential content, and intellectual property. It can restrict access or control document permissions (like view-only) to specific users or groups, set up features like watermarking, control time-limited access, and prevent data breaches and unauthorized sharing.
• Healthcare: Healthcare companies manage massive amounts of sensitive data about their customers’ health. DRM helps protect medical records, patient history, and sensitive research data. This ensures the privacy, confidentiality, and integrity of sensitive information and maintains compliance with data privacy regulations.

The task of setting up DRM for safely managing massive libraries of digital assets can feel daunting – especially if it’s your organization’s first attempt at creating this type of system. Here are a few challenges you might run into as you get started.

Common challenges of digital rights management.

1. Risks to data privacy and security: If you’re dealing with user data or sensitive information, you may be required to take additional steps to align with data security or privacy regulations. Otherwise, you may face fines or other penalties in the future.
2. Unauthorized access to content: Without a strong DRM system, you may be unknowingly allowing unauthorized users access to your content or files.
3. Lost revenue or damaged income streams: If you’re a publisher that relies on content protection to maintain your income, weak DRM practices could lead to lost revenue.
4. Risks to ownership of intellectual property: Without a DRM system to protect your assets from unauthorized use or access, you risk losing control of the assets you own.
5. Compliance clarity: Without clear guidance on copyright and ownership information, people using your digital assets may not be aware of the regulations around usage of content.

Key benefits of digital rights management.

1. Data privacy and protection: When digital access and usage rights are properly controlled, you help keep sensitive or personal information private and secure.
2. Controlled access to content: DRM systems make it simple to control how digital content is accessed and used.
3. Retention of revenue: When digital assets are properly managed and secured, creators or holders can continue to profit from their content.
4. Preservation of ownership: DRM protects intellectual property rights by preventing unauthorized copying, editing, and sharing of digital content.
5. Copyright education: DRM helps creators let customers know which use cases are okay and which are not allowed based on the copyright of a given asset.

No matter your industry or business size, managing content across channels and audiences can quickly become complex. A common challenge is keeping rights and usage permissions aligned with asset delivery. Below are two key strategies to help streamline digital rights management:

• Embed rights at the point of upload: As soon as a new asset is created, input it into your DAM system along with copyright, licensing, and access control information. Doing this upfront helps prevent unauthorized use and reduces the risk of rights violations later in the asset’s lifecycle.

• Automate license expiration rules: Automating asset expiration ensures compliance with licensing agreements and intellectual property terms. When a license expires, the DAM can automatically unpublish the asset and restrict access, editing, or downloads—helping to prevent accidental misuse.

While there are standalone DRM solutions for video, documents, and software, Adobe Experience Manager Assets provides a centralized, enterprise-ready solution that integrates rights management with AI-powered content workflows.

Experience Manager Assets makes it easy to track where content is stored, how it’s being used, and who has access. As a single source of truth for digital assets, it ensures your teams can always find the right content — while maintaining control over usage permissions and licensing terms.

The platform also simplifies rights management by clearly associating copyright, licensing, and access information with each asset. No more guesswork around fair use of publishing rights.

AI-driven features like smart tagging, auto-cropping, and content distribution further accelerate workflows — helping teams scale personalized content delivery while staying compliant.

Learn more about Adobe Experience Manager Assets or watch an overview video to see it in action.