"DRMe"

Digital Rights Management in the meat-world

"DRMe" /di-ar-m-e/ is a "media player" that controls the number of viewers of a video or a movie accordingly to the copyright agreement. It is a "real-world" implementation of Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Normally DRM is found in media software, such as Windows Media Player and iTunes. DRM was developed in attempt to control 'illegal' distributions of copyrighted video, films and other media. A media protected with DRM would only playback for its owner; once being copied, (e.g. to be shown to a friend), it would complain about you breaking the law and would prevent you from using it (block access in some ways).

But what about the case when the media is not copied but the number of viewers is more then what is allowed by the license? What if instead of making a copy for your friend, you invited that friend over to watch the video together? According to DRM principals this would be a violation of the copyright agreement. However, up until this moment there was no way of knowing how many people are watching that movie at the same time.

"DRMe" is the solution. It is a media player that knows how many people are watching the screen at the same time. If more then the allowed number of individuals appear in front of the screen - the movie pauses and a copyright notification message is displayed.

The DRM software running on this media player (computer) has detected more then one [1] viewer of this movie.
Current license does not allow sharing or public display of this media file.

The playback is resumed once there is only one person left in front of the screen.

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