The iPod's reign over the expanding digital music kingdom shows no signs of stopping yet, with Apple expecting to sell more than 15 million of its signature players this year. iPods can only play downloaded files from the iTunes online music store thanks to restrictions in digital rights management, or DRM.
In addition to being able to play iTunes purchased music, an iPod can play MP3s ripped from a CD the consumer owns, as well as all those MP3s that said consumer downloaded during the illicit Napster days of yore.
iTunes also includes the capability to convert (unprotected) Windows Media files so that they too can be played on an iPod.
The limiting factor here is really that Apple won't license its Digital Rights Management to others (so iTunes-purchased tracks won't work on non-iPod players) and Apple hasn't purchased similar licensing for Windows Media, so things purchased from Windows Media-affiliated stores don't like the iPod.
But all this copy-protection and digital rights management is simple to defeat, so it's really a non-issue.
Anyway, it angers me to read something like that paragraph, which demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the reporter didn't do her homework and doesn't understand the simplest concepts about the issue she's supposed to be covering.
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