8. DRM ISSUES
Libraries and archives play a crucial role, and some have a legal mandate to preserve and make available our cultural and scientific heritage for future generations. The DRM jeopardises this role as they have the potential to lock away covered material forever. The issue of long term preservation carries a real urgency as media must be adapted regularly to new data formats, operating systems and data carriers. In addition, data (e.g. music, software, electronic journals) stored in proprietary DRM formats is at much greater risk of being lost once the playback media is no longer available. Under DRM, there is a great risk that the public record of the future may be distorted. The DRM technologies attempt to control use of digital media by preventing access, copying or conversion to other formats beyond users.