In 2007, as Apple's iTunes was cementing its dominance over digital music distribution, Amazon tried something bold. It launched the Amazon MP3 store, where all the music was DRM-free. It even used the slogan: "DRM: Don't Restrict Me."
It worked. Companies initially lured to iTunes by the promise of DRM as an anti-piracy measure had increasingly come to see that DRM was a trap. Because Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it a felony in the U.S. to provide someone with a tool to remove DRM, every song sold through iTunes was permanently locked into Apple's platform. And it didn't take long for the music business to recognize that DRM didn't stop piracy. All it did was make labels beholden to a tech company that put its interests first.
