Managing Rights Management

CES 2010: DRM Is Alive And Well - Part 1

The 2010 Consumer Electronics Show was very upbeat, perhaps more so than two years ago (last year doesn't count given the economic implosion resulting in widespread malaise and depression). Of course the purpose of the these shows is to drum up excitement. 3D TV (not quite ready for prime time in my view, but I did not spend much time looking), Mobile, and Auto seemed to be the principal sectors leading the charge.

Having seen a lot of the show (at the expense of my feet), one conclusion is that rights management, broadly construed, is everywhere. In saying this, I'm taking a very expansive view of rights management to include both technical and non-technical--largely business model factors--means of protecting digital content. I'm excluding from consideration music CDs and related issues since there does not seem to be a good solution specific to the CD problem that is acceptable to privacy and consumer advocates.

In giving a few selected examples of how rights management is being further insinuated into services and business models, I'm leaving out many vendors (apologies to those not mentioned). I'm sure that critics will be able to find counter examples  My goal here is simply to identify trends.

Various parties with DRM and related solutions were at the show, including Irdeto and Digital Containers. HDMI Licensing had a booth as well. Metadata company Gracenote had a  booth that also highlighted customer applications. Executives from Widevine were in town but did not have a booth.

Media futurist Gerd Leonhard (among others) have long argued that the future of media is and should be streaming rather than downloading files. The 2010 CES makes it perfectly clear that the world is moving substantially toward media streaming. More in the next installment. 

HD and DRM

Writing in Personal Computer World, Barry Fox has a useful article on the dilemmas facing both consumers, studios, and networks over protecting HD video from capture, copying, and redistribution. The studios would prefer that consumers use HDMI compliant connections, but there are extensive legacy devices that only accept analog inputs.

In addition, not all HD capable devices protect high value content:

In theory, the studios can foil devices such as the Hauppauge PVR by burying ‘Image Constraint’ or ‘Digital Only’ tokens in the HD signal. These force a compliant disc player or receiver to down-res analogue HD content to SD, or completely blank the analogue output.

The token systems are controlled by AACS, the shadowy body that provides the copy protection system used by Blu-ray. Although Blu-ray has been on sale for a couple of years, AACS has still not set a final standard and protection has already been hacked. I asked the Blu-ray Group whether ICT and Dot flags would be used to stop analogue copying by the sledgehammer method of crippling all analogue play. “No comment,” said a spokesman. “It’s a studio decision to set flags.”

Pretty good protection may not be good enough in the long run, especially as broadband speeds increase further.  Verizon's FiOS' 20-20 symmetric service is a harbinger of things to come. While the video industry will continue to be well ahead of the music industry in content protection, failure to close all the holes may enable ongoing piracy and consumer file sharing.

Apple Retains DRM As Well

EFF Activist Richard Esguerra has a useful blog posting on Apple's remaining DRM and DRM-related technologies, although I fundamentally disagree with the EFF and Esguerra on DRM outside of the music industry. Still, Esguerra's blogicle is worth a read. He points out that Apple still uses DRM:

Could The Economy Derail Blu-Ray?

Could the bad economy kill Blu-ray? That's the question asked by Ed Oswald posting on Technologizer.

 ...economic troubles could be exactly what the rest of the industry needs to play catch-up. Streaming media seems to be the logical viable competitor, but it still needs probably another year or two yet before it is viable, both in better encoding technologies and more widespread availablity of ultra-high speed internet such as fiberoptics.

A streaming media solution would likely come at a dramatic cost savings, all the worse for Sony and its partners. Cost of entry into the Blu-ray world is its biggest obstacle — and with streaming media, the costs are less both for the content provider and the consumer.

Who Killed The Home Theater PC (HTPC)?

Writing in Ars Technica, Nate Anderson says the death of the Home Theater PC may be ascribed to several factors, including various rights management / copy protection / encryption technologies.

While the recording industry has largely learned its lesson from DRM, the movie business still thinks it's a great idea. You want to rip your legally-acquired DVDs or Blu-ray discs to your HTPC to create a disc-less movie archive? Forget it.

You can thank encryption schemes like CSS (DVD), AACS (HD DVD and Blu-ray), and BD+ (Blu-ray) for preventing this common request. The issue isn't largely technical, either. Despite the time and money invested in creating these schemes, bypassing them isn't particularly difficult, though the US DMCA will make a criminal of you for doing so. (There's a reason the AnyDVD guys are based in Antigua.)

Digital Doesn't Dimish DVD, Blu-ray

Digital distribution a drag on DVD, Blu-ray? 'Taint so, says this article in Home Media Magazine.

Blu-ray Disc sales alone should amount to at least three times what digital downloading is expected to bring in this year, studio executives say. In the first six months of 2008, consumers spent an estimated $194 million on Blu-ray Disc purchases, according to studio estimates — a gain of nearly 350% from the $43 million that came from high-definition disc sales the first six months of 2007, when growth was stymied by a format war between Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. The format war ended Feb. 19 this year, when chief HD DVD backer Toshiba Corp. officially bowed out.

What's Up With Blu-Ray?

Paul Sweeting, Editor of ContentAgenda, wrote recently that Toshiba and Kaleidescape are bringing to market players that up-vert standard DVD video to 1080p HiDef video.

"We have some customers who want Blu-ray just because it's the latest and greatest thing," Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcolm told Media Wonk. "But believed all along that Blu-ray would not be a successful product because the difference is just not compelling enough compared to DVD. Some early adopters will buy it, but I never believed it would make the leap to the enthusiast or early mainstream market."

What Is Blu-ray Anyway?

Now that Blu-ray has won the HiDef optical disc format war, what is Blu-ray anyway?  Over on CoolGadgets there is a longish posting that provides a good overview, including a quick review of Blu-ray security technologies AACS, BD+, and ROM mark. ROM mark is an antipriracy feature that is a watermark on the physical disc so that players can check on the authenticity of the disc inserted in the drive and then refuse to play titles that lack the proper mark.

What's Next for Blu-ray, BD+?

So now that Toshiba has given up on HD-DVD, what's next for Blu-ray, the winning HiDef optical format? This is the question posed by Kelly Rush and posted on HiDefDigest. Rush's prognostications include the suggestion that "BD+ starts getting aggressive:"

Until now, studios haven't been overly-aggressive with pushing this; they haven't even really needed to yet, since BD+ has not been properly cracked. Expect the studios and the Blu-Ray alliance to monitor what happens in the piracy community extremely closely now, and start making aggressive changes, should the need arise. Also, don't be surprised if new updates are added to the specs if it looks like crackers are getting too close to a proper solution for the BD+ protection, that allow the studios to have even tighter control over the DRM (Sony and Blu-Ray have made it clear that they don't mind breaking certain capabilities on older-standard Blu-Ray players as they move forward).

Agreed.

Samsung Sued Over Defective Blu-ray Players

CNET and Wired (and other sources) are reporting that a class action law suit has been filed against Samsung that  allegedly refused to provide firmware updates to some Blu-ray players that do not play certain titles correctly. The Wired article speculates that the problem(s) may have something to do with firmware that cannot handle correctly the BD+ copy protection technologies.

Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD Followup

Earlier I suggested that it was too soon to call a winner in the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD SuperBowl of next gen optical formats. Last week, several outlets, including the Hollywood Reporter and ComputerWorld, have noted that HD-DVD player sales have plummeted following Warner's announcement that they would exclusively support the Blu-ray format.

Apparently in response to the Warner, Toshiba announced earlier this month major price cuts for HD-DVD players:

"While price is one of the consideration elements for the early adopter, it is a deal-breaker for the mainstream consumer," said Yoshi Uchiyama, Group Vice President Digital A/V Group. "Consumer sales this holiday season have proven that the consumer awareness of the HD DVD format has been elevated and pricing is the most critical determinant in consumers' purchase decision of the next generation HD DVD technology. The value HD DVD provides to the consumer simply cannot be ignored."

Although it appears that the Warner announcement has given Sony and the Blu-ray camp substantial momentum, the format wars may not be settled until next January when the 2008 results are known.

 

Warner Goes Blu-ray - Are the HD Format Wars Over?

Eh, what's up, Doc? Warner Bros announced last week that it will eventually release only on Blu-ray rather than on HD-DVD optical discs.  Their press release in part says:

“A two-format landscape has led to consumer confusion and indifference toward high definition, which has kept the technology from reaching mass adoption and becoming the important revenue stream that it can be for the industry,” said [Kevin] Tsujihara [President, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group]. “Consumers have clearly chosen Blu-ray, and we believe that recognizing this preference is the right step in making this great home entertainment experience accessible to the widest possible audience.

CH-DVD, DRM, and The Blu-ray HD-DVD Battle

BetaNews has a couple of related articles of interest. Jacqueline Emigh's article begins with old news that DRM for music is dying, if not dead. More interesting is the discussing of the Chinese DVD standard, CH-DVD:

For high-def video to really start reaching greater numbers of people, high-def vendors need to give up their current grip on DRM and other manifestations of Blu-ray and HD DVD proprietary formats, and start selling discs that will work interchangeably on any vendor's HD equipment. But what will happen if these two warring camps continue to stay locked in their current stalemate?

What's Going On In The Living Room? DRM.

Investor's Business Daily has an overview article on the digital living room. The article rightly views the Macrovision / Gemstar TV deal as a natural outcome of convergence between copy protection technologies and Internet on-demand TV distribution. It concludes with a discussion of Marlin-based DRM interoperability and quotes Scott Smyers, who is president of the Digital Living Network Alliance and is a senior Sony technical guy.