Digital rights management systems and European law: between copyright protection and access control

Copyright in the digital age is both threatened and renewed by technical developments. Cultural heritage is becoming widely accessible; authors and editors can broadly distribute music, films, books and multimedia in new formats. However, the technique does not only encourage piracy, it also provides electronic intellectual property rights management tools. This paper proposes to lead a general legal overview on provisional and digital solutions to protect copyrighted works. After a review of the legal regulation framework, different ways of protecting work are described, as well as legal conditions for digital rights management system validity and efficiency. Finally, we consider how this new type of private regulation fits in with traditional public regulation in the IPR area.