Abstract
This paper explores an economic impact of digital rights management(DRM). DRM is an essential platform that enables protecting various rights of digital contents, facilitating their distribution and establishing a payment system with which contents creators and/or providers can recover their ex ante investments. It is, however, a noteworthy fact that DRM can also hold some elements, such as reduction of usability, creation of deadweight loss and entry barrier, that may diminish individual and/or social benefits. In this paper, I will take up some elements that can make social benefits or costs in the case of adopting DRM. Further, I will try to examine each element from an economic point of view.
