Vapourware: The tech that never was

SDMI
The Secure Digital Music Initiative was a group of companies, including ISPs, consumer electronics firms and security experts, who banded together to find a solution to the explosion of MP3-format music being shared over the Internet. Its idea was to legally distribute music online, and to have the music protected with watermarking that would be 'uncrackable'.

This would have been the first mainstream DRM implemented in the digital music world, but unfortunately for the SDMI guys, it became apparent (after setting hackers loose on their uncrackable technology) that the design was fundamentally flawed, and predictably crackable.

The initiative's demise wasn't hindered when Eric Scheirer, a correspondent for our sister site MP3.com, said in a 1999 article, "The real goal [of SDMI] was to bring the technology industry into the cartel owned by the major labels, to create an alliance that guaranteed the majors a continuing near-monopoly over musical content and its distribution."

He turned out to be correct. The SDMI initiative has been inactive since the middle of 2001, only to be replaced by a billion other DRM schemes, all just as equally flawed as the first.

As a matter of fact...
This was probably the first time the RIAA was chastised for its efforts in the world of distributing digital music legally online -- a trend that has certainly not subsided, and resulted in groups such as boycott-riaa.com.