Demise
On October 15, 1999, Eric Scheirer, later a digital music analyst for Forrester Research, wrote an editorial for MP3.com titled "The End of SDMI" which declared that the group's true goal to fold the technology industry into an alliance that would guarantee the record industry's near monopoly over musical content had failed. It drew a rebuttal from the president of the SDMI, Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione. The SDMI has been inactive since May 18, 2001.
In the end, the failure of SDMI could be attributed to several factors. There was unease that the technology was actually secure enough for production use, something that resonates with the debate over DRM today. There was also friction between the music industry and the consumer electronics industry over who would pay for the costs of implementing the technology in hardware (which from a consumer point of view would reduce functionality as non-SDMI devices would ignore any watermarks).
Chiariglione stepped down as SDMI's director in 2001, and later explained the reason for SDMI's halt after his departure as follows:
- Unfortunately it turned out that none of the technologies submitted could satisfy the requirements set out at the beginning, e.g. of being unnoticeable by so-called "golden ears". SDMI has then decided to suspend its work and wait for progress in technology.
Read more about this topic: Secure Digital Music Initiative