Digital rights management in the context of "IPad"

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM). It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. Passed on October 12, 1998, by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended Title 17 of the United States Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of the providers of online services for copyright infringement by their users.

The DMCA's principal innovation in the field of copyright is the exemption from direct and indirect liability of Internet service providers and other intermediaries. This exemption was adopted by the European Union in the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000. The Information Society Directive 2001 implemented the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty in the EU.

Music streaming services are a type of online streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to stream digital copyright restricted songs on-demand from a centralized library provided by the service. Some services may offer free tiers with limitations, such as advertising and limits on use. They typically incorporate a recommendation system to help users discover other songs they may enjoy based on their listening history and other factors, as well as the ability to create and share public playlists with other users.

Streaming services saw a significant pace of growth during the 2010s, overtaking online music stores as the largest source of revenue to the United States music industry in 2015, and accounting for a majority since 2016. As a result of their ascendance, streaming services (as well as music-oriented content on video sharing platforms) were incorporated into the methodologies of major record charts; the "album-equivalent unit" was developed as an alternative metric for the consumption of albums, to account for digital music and streaming.

Steam is a digital distribution service and storefront developed by Valve. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 to provide video game updates automatically for Valve's games and expanded to distributing third-party titles in late 2005. Steam offers various features, such as game server matchmaking with Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) measures, social networking, and game streaming services. The Steam client functions include update maintenance, cloud storage, and community features such as direct messaging, an in-game overlay, discussion forums, and a virtual collectable marketplace. The storefront also offers productivity software, game soundtracks, videos, and sells hardware made by Valve, such as the Valve Index and the Steam Deck.

Steamworks, an application programming interface (API) released in 2008, is used by developers to integrate Steam's functions, including digital rights management (DRM), into their products. Several game publishers began distributing their products on Steam that year. Initially developed for Windows, Steam was ported to macOS and Linux in 2010 and 2013 respectively, while a mobile version of Steam for interacting with the service's online features was released on iOS and Android in 2012.

The SD card is a proprietary, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). They come in three physical forms: the full-size SD, the smaller miniSD (now obsolete), and the smallest, microSD. Owing to their compact form factor, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of portable consumer electronics, including digital cameras, camcorders, video game consoles, mobile phones, action cameras, and camera drones.

The format was introduced in August 1999 as Secure Digital by SanDisk, Panasonic (then known as Matsushita), and Kioxia (then part of Toshiba). It was designed as a successor to the MultiMediaCard (MMC) format, introducing several enhancements including a digital rights management (DRM) feature, a more durable physical casing, and a mechanical write-protect switch. These improvements, combined with strong industry support, contributed to its widespread adoption.

Anti-circumvention refers to laws which prohibit the circumvention of technological barriers for using a digital good in certain ways which the rightsholders do not wish to allow. The requirement for anti-circumvention laws was globalized in 1996 with the creation of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Copyright Treaty.

Amazon Music (previously Amazon MP3) is a music streaming platform and digital music store operated by Amazon. As of January 2020, the service had 55 million subscribers.

It was the first music store to sell music without digital rights management (DRM) from the four major music labels (EMI, Universal, Warner, and Sony BMG), as well as many independents. All tracks were originally sold in 256 kilobits-per-second variable bitrate MP3 format without per-customer watermarking or DRM; however, some tracks are now watermarked.