Media companies and producers of intellectual property are currently threatened with massive information product piracy. Digital Rights Management Systems (DRMS) offer technical copyright protection measures to protect content against digital piracy. The authors give an overview about the status quo of DRMS from a functional, technical and architectural perspective. Apart from purely technological issues, it is also essential to take the economic aspects of DRMS into consideration. The trade-off between content protection and total cost of ownership of a DRMS installation will require the determination of a suitable level of technical copyright protection for a given context.