Apple Abandons Digital Rights Management

On January 6, 2009, Apple Inc announced that it was abandoning its Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology and deleting it from the songs it sells through iTunes. Its entire online catalogue is expected to be offered without DRM by the end of March, 2009. DRM was intended to prevent the endless copying and re-copying of a file a consumer had paid for only once. When Apple launched its digital music store in 2003, purchased songs contained digital code that prevented them from being used on non-Apple devices. The code also prevented users from unlimited transfers to CDs or to multiple computers. Since then, Apple has become the largest retailer of music in the US and has sold over five billion songs. Users who have already purchased protected music from iTunes will be able to upgrade their entire library of previously-purchased songs, for a fee. For news sources, see: http://www.financialpost.com/news/story.html?id=1148635; and http://tinyurl.com/c7pw2m Summary by: Clare McCurley