Streaming and DRM: Ruchi Patel

In regards to whether or not I believe streaming (or licensing) has positively impacted DRM, I would have to conclude that is has both its benefits and negative aspects. For starters, it has had the ability to revolutionize the way in which many people listen to music, watch movies and more. It allows for limitless access to these aspects from all across and country and all over the world. With streaming services having their own systems and regulations, sometimes it is the artists that are hurt in this process as they are paid little after the implementation of labels and services taking some of their cut. In terms of streaming services for movies the idea that everything is laid out on a platform for easy access is rather nice, however, that does not mean everyone can afford it, thus resulting in more illegal sites and piracy. Without physical disks, it makes it much easier to copy and in the process, perform illegal activities. I think that there is still a need from many different organizations and companies to “own” these aspects of movies, music and tv, however, with the digital and online age, that is more difficult to come by as there are online (most illegal) alternative measures that people can take. The impact that this has on remix and sampling is that DRM ultimately prevents the ability of creativity due to the fact that work that is purchased is so difficult to be able to copy. With streaming services, you are not given a physical hard copy of a song that makes it difficult to remix, but instead, you can stream the music from different platforms as long as you oblige to that specific platforms terms ( ads, payed account etc). Although illegal to share a copied song, there is no reason that is hindering the ability to remix these songs if of course, there is no profit and or you are not doing anything illegal in terms of copyright infringement.