Unlike Intel and AMD, the big chip makers for Windows-based computers, Apple hasn't announced plans to put technology into hardware that could end up restricting what customers do with the products they buy. Unlike Microsoft, Apple hasn't asserted the right to remote control over users' operating systems.
The era of Digital Rights Management, commonly called DRM, is swiftly moving closer, thanks to the Intels and AMDs and Microsofts. They're busy selling and creating the tools that give copyright holders the ability to tell users of copyrighted material -- customers, scholars, libraries, etc. -- precisely how they may use it. DRM, in the most typical use of the expression, is about owners' rights. It would be more accurate to call DRM, in that context, 'Digital Restrictions Management.''
But Apple has taken a different tack in its rhetoric and its technology. Apple's modern operating system, is becoming, whether by design or by accident, a Digital Rights Management operating system where the rights in question are the user's rights -- and they are expansive.
The company's 'Digital Hub'' concept has been one of its major selling points. The Mac is becoming the hub of a digital lifestyle, in which you move data between a Mac and various devices around the home, such as digital cameras, MP3 players and the like.
Apple does admonish users not to infringe the copyrights of others, as it should. And the company built a small speed bump into the iPod, which basically lets users share MP3s between one computer and the handheld player. But it took little time for a third-party programmer to come up with software that let users move MP3s to other machines, too, and as far as I can tell Apple hasn't said a word.
News source: SilliconValley.com article
