Streaming Media - October/November 2007 - (Page 48) DRM Reports of DRM’s death have been greatly exaggerated. If anything, it’s more important than ever. Demystified By Christopher Levy hen Streaming Media magazine asked me to write an article about the state of digital rights management (DRM), I admittedly jumped at the opportunity. Not since the digital media format wars of the late ’90s have we seen a subject galvanize an audience so quickly. Postings about DRM on forums regularly draw in a vocal crowd with a laundry list of complaints and as well as kudos about DRM and its widespread use. That being said, there has been a lot of negative press lately about DRM, primarily focused on the music industry and its woes. To some extent, the confusion created as a result has created more questions than it has provided answers. Many have pointed to the recent announcements by EMI and Universal that they will begin offering DRM-free music in various online outlets as an indicator of the death of DRM. Let’s look at what is really going on here. The iPod uses a DRM technology called FairPlay, which Apple does not license to third parties. This really leaves the music industry with very few options if they want to sell music directly to the public, especially to consumers with iPods. To successfully compete with the iTunes monster they helped create, the record companies have one viable option: to set up their own music stores sans-DRM in the hope they can begin to claw back those millions of customers they sent to Apple. It’s not hard to envision a music industry exec writing, “Note to self: Next time we endorse a technology we cannot license, let’s be sure to get our customers’ names and billing information.” Apple made DRM a mainstream technology on its way to selling more than two billion songs encrypted with FairPlay, and yet it refuses to play fair with the marketplace. It is a wonder that Apple has not received more pressure to license FairPlay, given that the company would create a much broader market for pay-media content on the iPod. However, in doing so, it would lose its stranglehold over the online music marketplace, and this is apparently something Steve Jobs is not willing to let happen. W 48 STREAMING MEDIA October/November 2007
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