Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI)

The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) was a project launched in the early 2000s to develop standards for protecting digital music from unauthorized copying and distribution. Its goal was to enable music to be shared digitally while preventing piracy. SDMI created technical specifications for digital rights management (DRM), which accompany digital music files to restrict copying and sharing. Despite its intentions, SDMI faced challenges from hackers and industry debates, ultimately leading to its decline around 2005. Its efforts paved the way for later DRM technologies used by music services to manage digital content securely.