The document discusses digital rights management (DRM) technology which focuses on preventing illegal distribution of paid digital content by embedding protection in media files. DRM has four main components: a protection toolkit to set access and encryption rules, a distribution toolkit to create interfaces, a consumer toolkit to verify authorization, and a back office component to track usage and licensing. While DRM has helped reduce illegal downloading and forced students to purchase music legally, it has also been used to track and penalize students for past illegal downloading activities.