DRM by any other name

In 2009, Apple announced that all of its music would be Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free. At that moment, this announcement was huge. The iTunes store, the world’s largest music retail store, always had DRM, which restricts the number of devices a song can be played on and what type of device permitted to play the music. While iTunes may be “DRM-free,” DRM is still included on most digital music available on the Internet – they just call it something else.

Cloud Computing for iTunes and the RIAA is interested?

Whenever some new use of the internet to download music comes along, the Recording Industry Association of America tries to shut the action down through litigation . . . unless of course the action was created by iTunes. This time around Apple is interested in cloud computing where iTunes users can access their music database via streaming technology from anywhere there’s the internet. Users would upload their (legally purchased) music onto an Apple server and always have access to their music. Sounds good, only this idea is not new nor has the RIAA been approving of this structure in the past.