Technological Protection Measures: Part I - Trends in Technical Protection Measures and Circumvention Technologies

This is the first of two companion Studies prepared for the Copyright Policy Branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage. These Studies address a range of policy considerations associated with the use of technological protection measures (TPMs) as a means of applying the law of copyright in digital environments. The Studies also investigate the various policy choices implicated in the decision to provide legal protection to TPMs in the context of Canadian copyright law. In this first Study, the authors focus on the actual technologies used to protect copyrights by offering technological descriptions of various TPMs, as well as an enumeration of their current and anticipated functions. The objective is to furnish a clearer understanding of what TPMs are, how they are used, and what their circumvention might entail. This first Study is a necessary precondition to the second Study, which will provide a copyright policy analysis of the use and legal protection of TPMs in the context of the decision regarding whether or how Canada might choose to implement the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT). Following some basic background and the introduction of a few key concepts in Part 2 of this Study, Part 3 investigates some recent trends in the development of TPMs. In Part 4, the authors commence their investigation of the circumvention of TPMs. The subject matter of this investigation is then magnified in Part 5 through an examination of full-scale digital rights management systems (DRMs). Finally, in Part 6, the authors briefly contemplate the future of TPMs in order to properly situate the policy discussion that takes place in the second Study.