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.
