Page 227 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

0 | The Tunes Effect

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Deepa Kumar

the itunes eFFeCt
Apple’s iPod digital player and iTunes music service presently dominate the
online music industry. Apple has kept its position by maintaining tight control
over its players and services, but many of its innovations have been adopted by
competitors at lower prices. Will the future see a continuation of Apple’s policy
of offering individual downloads, or will alternatives emerge?
With the slogan “Rip, Mix, Burn,” Apple introduced its iPod portable music
player in October 2001. The slogan referred to the ability of Apple comput-
ers to copy music and create customized CDs. Record company executives
were appalled, arguing that they were losing millions of dollars a year to illegal
downloads. They claimed that the slogan was an invitation to steal copyrighted
material. But the slogan was consistent with Apple’s “Think Different” strategy, a
strategy that has paid handsome dividends.
Since it was founded in the late 1970s, Apple has cultivated an image of a
company that is “different.” Cofounder Steve Jobs initially suggested that its

digital rights ManageMent
Digital technologies allow a potentially limitless number of copies to be made that are iden-
tical to the original. To thwart this, Apple’s iTunes service, as well as all the online services
that provide authorized content from the four major record companies, includes digital
rights management (DRM) in its files. DRM takes two forms: encryption, which allows only
authorized users to play back files by requiring them to purchase an electronic “key”; and
watermarking, an “electronic fingerprinting” technology which restricts copying to a limited
number of players and copies and also enables files to be traced back to their original users.
Both DRM components were given force of law by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) of 1998. The DMCA made it a crime to bypass DRM, even if we make copies for
personal, noncommercial use after purchasing an original copy of a CD, DVD, or digital file.
A comprehensive DRM system, such as Apple’s Fairplay system, covers the entire life cycle of
products, from mastering to manufacturing to distribution to playback.