Your Rights Reserved?

The article focuses on issues related to digital rights management (DRM) for Apple Computer Inc. (Apple). With its video-capable iPod music player and a new iMac computer designed to double as a home entertainment system, Apple is quickly becoming as much a multimedia company as a computer vendor. It has already sold more than 600 million songs and more than 28 million iPods, and it passed the one-million-videos-sold mark less than 20 days after making video available at the iTunes Music Store. But behind that transformation lurks the issue of digital rights management (DRM). The DRM system is designed to protect the rights of content owners--musicians, record labels, movie studios, and the like. But it can collide with the desires of consumers who want to enjoy the music and videos they buy whenever and wherever they want. From the day the iTunes store arrived, everything Apple has sold there has been governed by the DRM system. The more complicated the world of digital media becomes, the more often users will begin to hit the limitations of DRM.