Managing Rights Management

Rant: Sony's DRM

After reading this cited article, for some reason I'm reminded of the saying, "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig" ( attributed to several, including Robert Heinlein and P.G. Wodehouse). Ed Foster's Gribe Line Blog has a reasonable rant against Sony's... Read more →

John Robert's Record on DRM?

Wired News has an article wondering about nominee John Robert's record on DRM and related issues. Quite apart from the article, it's difficult to imagine that there will be a DRM-related litmus test. Snippets: Attorneys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation are holding their breath along with everyone else, calling Roberts'... Read more →

Another DRM As Competitive Weapon Example

Writing in PCWorld, Martyn Williams, of IDG News Service, recounts how SK Telecom is using DRM as a competitive weapon, some would say as an anti-competition weapon. Snippets: SK Telecom is using its own digital rights management system to protect downloaded music. Music loaded onto its phones won't play anywhere... Read more →

DRM's Demon Days

Writing in EContent, Michele Manafy reports on a recent panel discussion that in part addressed content distribution and DRM. Several calls for open standards for DRM. Still, it may well be continue to be the case that many distribution companies don't know what rights they have, as pointed out by... Read more →

Recently Published Patent Applications

Every Thursday, the US Patent and Trademark Office publishes pending patent applications. Publication has no bearing on whether a patent will eventually be issued based on the application. Still, issued patents and published applications are often indicators of what people have been thinking about and the kinds of things that... Read more →

Downloading 'myths' challenged

Downloaders of pirated music are also big spenders on legal music. This according to a BBC story [top o' the hat to Gigalaw]. Snippets: The study found that regular downloaders of unlicensed music spent an average of £5.52 a month on legal digital music. This compares to just £1.27 spent... Read more →

IDC Says Mobile DRM Complexity A Factor In US

According to this PCWorld article. Snippets: The analysts note that wireless full-track download services have yet to launch in the United States, stymied by the lack of available handsets and 3G networks, the complexity of digital rights management, competition from incumbent services, and business pricing models and practices. Read more →

Motorola's iradio

What's Motorola planning? According to this Gizmodo blogicle, a music downloading (not streaming) service that is subscription-based and "heavily drm'd." Read more →

Recently Issued Patents

The US Patent Office issues new patents on Tuesdays. Issued patents and published applications may be early indicators of the kinds of issues being addressed by inventors and/or the companies for whom they work. Assigned to Canon, the first patent discloses a way of using more than one data in... Read more →

Custom Ringtones

And while we're on the subject of ringtones, PC World has a blogicle on using Xingtones to create custom ringtones. Xintones does not work with DRM-protected content. Read more →

Ringtones Shoplifted

According to a Qpass study reported in Internet News, by 2006 $300M worth of ringtones may have been "shoplifted" from online distributors. The reason? No Digital Rights Management. Snippets: The preview content on the "unsecured" site could have been secured using some form of a digital right management (DRM) enabled... Read more →

Bush Creates AnitPiracy Post

President Bush has, according to this Reuters article, created a new senior-level position to fight global piracy and counterfeiting of American products and appointed Chris Israel, an assistant to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. A major focus is on reducing piracy in China. Snippets: Bush has tapped Chris Israel, currently deputy... Read more →

Corbis and epa Announce Partnership

Corbis has announced a distribution deal with the European Pressphoto Agency that will leverage Corbis' licensing and rights management capabilities. Snippet: "This agreement is about making the most of our extensive global resources and working co-operatively with a strategic partner to meet the needs of all our customers," said Gary... Read more →

Microsoft and DRM

Chris Lanier has a worthwhile posting on DRM and Microsoft. Snippet: What happens if the consumer fights Microsoft and the content owners? This is a broken argument, and it doesn’t stand up in my mind. Microsoft can’t just play the “Screw You!” card to the content owners and expect it... Read more →

Recently Published Patent Applications

Every Thursday, the US Patent and Trademark Office publishes pending patent applications. Publication has no bearing on whether a patent will eventually be issued based on the application. Still, issued patents and published applications are often indicators of what people have been thinking about and the kinds of things that... Read more →

DRM Coming To Linux

In an otherwise straight forward and mostly technical account of a recent Linux conference in Canada by David Graham on the NewsForge site, are a couple of lines about Linux security: On the security front, the kernel is to get its own contact for security issues. Trusted computing -- digital... Read more →

Hollywood May Demand DRM For Large Drives

According to this Scott Fulton piece in Tom's Hardware Guide, Hollywood is concerned about huge disk drives coming to market in the not too distant future. Snippets: More space for portable consumer electronics is a no brainer. Who wouldn't want more space on their iPods and enough room for several... Read more →

To DRM Or Not To DRM - Games

GamesBiz (UK) editor Rob Fahey discusses Stardocks' TotalGaming distribution system and Stardock's decision not to include "heavy" rights management capabilities. This decision is driven by business model considerations. The system eschews traditional "heavy" Digital Rights Management (DRM) techniques in favour of providing incentives for users to use legal copies of... Read more →

China Attempts To Sink MP3 Pirates

China's answer to Google, Baidu.com [Chinese language site], is deleting links to pirated MP3 music files, apparently in preparation for its Initial Public Offering, according to an article in TopTechNews. Snippets: The move is a response to requests from R2G, a Chinese digital rights management company, which is currently preparing... Read more →

Amature Culture, Rights

BBC News has an article on the explosion of amature culture and copyright. Snippets: Cory Doctorow, a campaigner for digital rights with lobby group Electronic Frontier Foundation, agreed. "We are in a pretty pitched battle on many, many fronts," he said. Big media companies are imposing copy protection restrictions on... Read more →

Intel, Linux, and DRM

eWeek has an article on Intel's increasing support for the Linux operating systems that says: But the company [Intel] must still be careful how it addresses the new technologies, particularly those related to security or digital rights management, within the Linux community. DRM, which is generally seen as a method... Read more →

Returned From Client Work

For those looking for their daily dose of news and commentary, the past week has been devoted entirely to client work. Back this week. Read more →

Recently Published Patent Applications

Every Thursday, the US Patent and Trademark Office publishes pending patent applications. Publication has no bearing on whether a patent will eventually be issued based on the application. Still, issued patents and published applications are often indicators of what people have been thinking about and the kinds of things that... Read more →

Recently Published Patent Applications

Every Thursday, the US Patent and Trademark Office publishes pending patent applications. Publication has no bearing on whether a patent will eventually be issued based on the application. Still, issued patents and published applications are often indicators of what people have been thinking about and the kinds of things that... Read more →

GigaTrust's Federated RMS Service

Federated or multi-organization DRM is, of course, one of the Holy Grails of Enterprise Rights Management. Now GigaTrust has announced a federated DRM service for those who have implemented Microsoft's RMS. Snippets: GigaTrust announced a federated solution for authenticating and connecting users who need to exchange rights-protected content. By connecting... Read more →

Google Developing Its Own DRM - Gartner

Gartner's note on Google's entry into video search has this to say about Google and DRM: Google's offering differentiates itself from its competitors through its vision and its application of technology. The new service is a sign to creators of premium content that Google is dedicated to building a robust... Read more →

Recently Issued Patents

The US Patent Office issues new patents on Tuesdays. Issued patents and published applications may be early indicators of the kinds of issues being addressed by inventors and/or the companies for whom they work. Assigned to Aladdin, the first patent discloses way of managing content rights while permitting off-line playback... Read more →

Woes of the Protected CD

Jason Dunn writes on his experience with and circumventions for MediaMax CD copy protection. A longer and more technical discussion of MediaMax is here. Snippet from the Dunn piece: I put the CD into my computer and immediately a MediaMax installer pops up. I thought it was some lame "enhanced... Read more →

Defending Content Owners

Writing on ZDNet, John Carroll defends the interests of content creators. My views are a bit different. I strongly believe that DRM tools should be available to everyone, not just big companies. Nonetheless, this is some of what Carroll had to say: We're standing on the threshold of a new... Read more →

Post-Grokster

There are, of course, numerous comments in the blogosphere and press on Grokster. Raymond Blijd comments on the consequences of Grokster for software vendors and content distributors. Although I think this position is vastly overstated, Blijd says this about Grokster's impact on innovation: The Supreme Court has, in essence, poisoned... Read more →