I would also be wary of using wikipedia for official confirmation of a term's definition. Although even with the best intentions, often those adding information are simply mistaken or reference sources poorly.

I'm not saying wikipedia is not a good source of information, just be cautious that's all.

It lacks both the digital and the management component... it's PRC - physical rights check ;-)

PS: When you need a physical key to start your car - is your car DRM'd?

What do you mean? I have (technically, had) an air-gapped blu-ray player that played perfectly. Are you saying all blu-ray recordings are decrypted by the player, every time they are played?

All information on a computer is digital. I am not aware of a DRM definition that says that the distribution must take place through a digital channel. And the management? The user is allowed to use the software or not. Looks like management to me (the same way traffic lights are responsible for traffic management).

Just because the term DRM is fairly recent doesn't mean that older copy protection schemes don't fit its definition.

It's really down to arguing over how terminology has changed. Eg, the historially accurate terminology is that DRM = online checks whilst 1990's games with offline (disc / manual / code-wheel based) copy protection that prevented disc duplication but could still be legally resold to someone else, just referred to it as "Copy Protection" in their manuals. These days, the more "popular common usage" is that DRM = "all restrictions including "old school" offline copy protection".

Personally I used to be in favor of the former term and making a distinction of whether or not you could resell a game, however the latter broader terminology has the advantage of side-stepping Denuvo marketing style "It's not technically DRM, just tamper protection for DRM" nonsense. (Newer Denuvo versions do indeed have their own authentication server's, so that argument is long dead anyway). The point is though, literally no-one falls for the "Denuvo / VMProtect aren't DRM" because of overly strict definitions that may ever differ from one language to another.

Which is why I referenced more than one source, and asked for a source that has a definition of DRM being only an online server-based system. So far, no one has posted any, so it seems that Wikipedia is correct in this case.


I really would love to see that computer game or software which isn't digital!


You need a physical keycard to enter, let's say, a hotel room. Yet that keycard can be made invalid by someone in the reception simply by pushing a single button. When you check out, the system does that automatically.

Same can be done with car keys, obviously, as can be done with any key system that has any IT behind it.

If the BD is copy-protected, yes the disk's content are encrypted and have to be decrypted (IIRC twice even) by the player - how else would it work? The thing is - the players have a model-unique id which also acts as part of the key for decryption. These ids can be revoked by a blacklist which is contained on BDs. Effectively, if the player is compromised (key for decryption stolen) the model goes to the blacklist. If you insert a disk with your player model on the blacklist the player will practically disable itself.

The other thing is, that after the player decrypted the video stream, he has to re-encrypt it to be send to the TV (based on a key TV set and player create between them. The TV then has to decrypt this again to show the picture. Talk about paranoia in the content industry...

Oh hey, people don't agree on what constitutes DRM! yay!

Yes, that's good to know. If there exists a mechanism to deactivate the player, then it would not uncommon for such a mechanism to fail. I think I just discovered why I used the perfect tense to indicate my ownership of said blu-ray player. :|

You don't say! o_O