The Digital Rights Management (DRM) affects the privacy of the user in various ways. DRM technologies are of many types of computer based methods of protecting information that is digitally stored and these also include different ways of enforcing access control only to authorized personnel. DRM enables the author of information or the seller to limit the use of digital content either on a single computer and for a specific time and prevent any copyright that may be attempted by the consumer. The DRM innovation provides options for managing and protecting the interest of the copyright holders providing proper identification tools that pertains to content availability. The importance of citing while writing an academic paper is to avoid plagiarism, to make it easier for readers to locate the source of your work and to give credit to the author of the original idea.

DRM can affect individuals privacy in the following ways; limiting a document to one user, specifying the number of times a document can be opened, limiting the dates when a document can be available for viewing and enable or disable copy/ pasting facilities. DRM imposes restrictions at the cost of the consumer's rights to privacy, it cuts down the freedom of expression and fair use of rights. It is highly inflexible to the end user. It prevents users from using copyrighted materials which may at times make it difficult to cite other people information.

As technology improves, DRM is more affecting fair dealings of the end user also this may enhance tracking of the users of the digital content via user identification affecting the user's privacy and it will not only track user actions but will also report to copyright holder on the progress of the individual users activities.

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