The benefits derived from the ease with which digital content can be duplicated and distributed are readily apparent, but, unfortunately, those same benefits are available to both the legitimate content owner as well as the illegitimate content user. This loss of control often results in the loss of the content's value. Digital Rights Management technology restores the control of the content’s distribution back to the content owner thereby restoring its value.

DRM accomplishes this by ensuring that only those authorized by the content owner are permitted access to the content. As an analogy, consider a strong box secured by a combination lock in a roomful of people. Anyone in the room can see the box, but only those people with the combination issued by the box’s owner can open the box to see what’s inside.

But DRM goes far beyond this simple real-world example. With an imaginary DRM protected box, the box’s owner could specify the number of times the combination could be used to open the box, or a date after which after which the combination would no longer work. The owner of our imaginary DRM protected box could also control whether the user would be permitted to make a copy of the content or move it to another location.