Secure Digital Music Initiative

What Does Secure Digital Music Initiative Mean?

The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) was a working group of more than 200 companies and organizations interested in the development of specifications for secure digital music distribution. SDMI emerged in 1998 with the goal of stamping out Internet music piracy, as sites such as Napster, Gnutella and Morpheus were distributing MP3 songs via peer-to-peer networks. SDMI went on hiatus in 2001 when they were unable to reach a consensus about which technologies should be implemented to protect music from digital copying.

Advertisements

Techopedia Explains Secure Digital Music Initiative

SDMI disbanded for several reasons, many of which were related to which technologies would be implemented for digital rights management (DRM) and whether the music industry or electronics producers would shoulder the cost. SDMI also made waves by presenting a challenge to the digital community in September 2000, encouraging hackers and cryptologists to try their hand at removing a new, more secure digital watermark from some example pieces of music. When a group at Princeton University did so and made a move to publish their results, the SDMI and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) threatened legal action, raising the hackles of civil libertarians who argued that digital copyright laws could not be used to stifle academic research.

Advertisements

Related Terms

Latest Internet Terms

Related Reading

Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…