A DAM Plan

Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Digital Rights Management (DRM) are increasingly receiving attention. For those who have lives that revolve with greater frequency around the digital world the question of how to manage all your medai files looms on the horizon. In the early days 40MB storage, or storage via cassette tape, seemed more than adequate. Currently one second of uncompressed HDTV consumes 1.5 gigabytes. This means my 60GB hard drive, if cleared of all other information, could hold 40 seconds. The problem is growing with our appetite for higher resolution and expanded options and details. Text, audio files, movies, photos all demand more, MORE. This explosion in customer demand combined with software programmers who have long given up their dieting ways in favor of recipies rich in fats leads us to future difficulties.
Our need for digital media storage space increases and the industry is happy to accommodate us. Building larger plug and play storage devices for consumers and terabyte options for business eases the pending crisis in the short term. But how do we manage all of the digital assets we acquire? And how do businesses control how often and how far their digital products go once they "leave the building?"
On a personal level it is labor and cost prohibitive to catalog and perceive each video or audio clip and still photo so they will be available for easy future access and use. Like the old filing cabinets, businesses do best when there is someone who can find what is needed quickly. For a business storage and instant access is critical. How can a company identify the depth of their digital assets and establish a process for making applicable portions available to future projects? DAM attempts to categorize digital media content for future re-purposing. The same digital files can be re-packaged to generate additional revenue with numerous new purposes.
For the church, like the one I am a part of, an archive of sermons, or special events, that could be easily accessed would assist the church's core goal of providing encouragement and a deepening of faith. The issue of increased profitability is not at the heart of digital asset management. But effective use of past, current, and future media assets remains at the center.
DRM not only allows for digital asset management but also reemphasize control. DRM allows the product provider to place limitations on the purchased product. These limits include authorization for a specific number of media asset transfers and downloads. The ability to control, track and set a limit on the number of times a person is able to "share" the product with other's. The allows a product provider to tighten their control on their products and overall brand. This limits the ways in which a customer can mis-represent a particular company's products.

Both articles helped raise my awareness of this growing and important area. Storage will continue to get larger and cheaper, and programmers and consumers may become lazy and careless. We would rather get bigger rather than become more efficient.