Digital Music Rights Management
Digital rights management is the rights most entertainment people have when they release a movie, cd, or what have you. For example:Â When you watch a movie, before the movie starts, the copyright page that comes up says “FBI Warning” and then states that copy writing and sharing is illegal and you can go to jail, pay a stiff fine or both.
When you go online and download free music from random sites onto your mp3 player, you are committing a crime. If you download movies especially ones that are still in the theaters, you are committing a crime. Basically, the people involved in the making of whatever film, or the making of whatever album, are not getting the royalties when you go and download their stuff for free.
One of the biggest music rights cases in US history was Napster. When you could download all the music you wanted. Now Napster is legal because it is pay per song but in 1999 when the digital rights managements was at its peek in the media, Napster was allowing people to download music free. The entertainment industry made a big stink about it because they were not seeing a dime from the downloading of their music. Napster was shut down for a brief period but came back totally legal after they added the pay per song. So everyone got something out of it.
In essence the piracy of movies and music for free or your own financial gain is illegal.
Sources:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/drm.htm
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/napster.htm