How to Compete with Free in the World of Digital Media: Debunking the DRM Myth

The media is abuzz with reports of illegal music and movie downloading, peer-to-peer file sharing and the related ongoing legal and legislative battles being played out in our courts and in Congress. Most of these discussions perpetuate a myth that existing, or soon-to-be-developed, digital rights management (DRM) technologies are the key to solving the entertainment industry's piracy woes. As support for this notion, many cite Apple's successful iTunes music download service. The conventional wisdom is that since Apple uses DRM and Apple is successful, then technical copy protection mechanisms must have been instrumental in Apple's success. The truth is that Apple's DRM technology, called FairPlay, was indeed instrumental in Apple's success, but not because it preve View the rest of this article