Managing Rights Management

DECE Moving Toward "buy once, play anywhere" Deployment

Many outlets including New York Times and Variety highlight progress by the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, a broad consortium of companies implementing a cloud-based "buy once, play anywhere" content distribution strategy .

DECE has tapped Virginia-based Neustar to operate that digital locker. It's also approved Adobe Flash Access, CMLA-OMA V2, the Marlin DRM Open Standard, Microsoft PlayReady and Widevine as the five digital rights management formats that can protect the files stored in the locker.

Apple and Disney remain holdouts.

Adobe Opens Up RTMP But Keeps DRM Under Wraps

Ars Technica reports that Adobe is opening up its Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP), its widely used streaming media protocol. At the same time, Adobe is taking legal steps to protect the DRM components used in conjunction with RTMP.

Adobe has declined publish details about RTMP's DRM mechanism and will expressly forbid implementation of DRM circumvention measures in the license that governs the official RTMP specification.

"To benefit customers who want to protect their content, the open RTMP specification will not include Adobe's unique secure RTMP measures, nor will the license that accompanies the specification allow developers to circumvent such measures," the company revealed in a statement.

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.

Vista, DRM, and Virtualization

Over the weekend, Eric Lai wrote in PCWORLD that Microsoft had decided not to remove restrictions on consumers virtualizing its Vista operating system. The reason given by Lai is that DRM may not work with a virtualized OS.

Gates, BBC On DRM, TV

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Ashley Highfield, the BBC's director of new media and technology did a Q/A at the Mix06 Conference in Las Vegas, this according to an article published on Informitv.com. Topics included DRM. Snippets:

MSFT, Authentica, and Independent DRM Vendors

BusinessWeekOnline has an interview with attorney Thomas Vinje, who represents Microsoft antagonists, in which Vinje notes:

In February, ECIS filed a new complaint that accuses Microsoft of trying to extend its dominance via planned new products, such as a new operating system for servers. What does that mean exactly?

What Microsoft is trying to do now is bundle digital rights management products into the operating system. We've seen this movie before. We've seen it with Netscape, with RealPlayer (which lost massive market share after Microsoft bundled similar products into Windows).

Microsoft has 70% of the overall server market, they are certainly dominant. Try selling digital rights management products when there is already a usable one in the operating system.

Are MSFT and INTL Greedy?

Writing on HardwareAnalysis.com, Sander Sassen asserts that Microsoft and Intel are acting out of greed in their efforts to secure high definition video and other media content. Greed or smart business? I think the latter.

There is, by the way, nothing inherent in well-implemented rights management that prevents the rules associated with protected content to take into account many if not most "fair use" situations. The question is whether DRM technologies included in and/or layered on top of WinTel's DRM are sufficiently feature rich to enable those with rights in media content to define apparent fair uses, such as backup copies.

Snippets:

Blu-Ray DRM Plans Revealed

According to this worthwhile ExtremeTech article, the Blu-ray Disc Association has settled on its plans for incorporating DRM. Snippets:
 

Intel, Linux, and DRM

eWeek has an article on Intel's increasing support for the Linux operating systems that says:

SaaS for DRM?

ASPs (Application Services Providers) are mostly dead having died in the collapse of the Bubble. Well, OK, many are living happy lives at the moment but have eliminated  from their names and marketing collateral the term ASP as a way of  describing central server-based applications sold on a services model. The new term is SaaS: Software as a Service. Is DRM a candidate for a successful SaaS offering? Maybe.  Maybe not. eWeek has an article on SaaSs that addresses this possibility. Snippets:

Intel's Home Entertainment Platform

In an interview given to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) and described here (no subscription required), Intel's new CEO Paul Otellini says that:

Linux and DRM

I continue to wonder when the Open Source community is going to take DRM seriously. As near as I can tell, it hasn't happened yet, in part because of their general antipathy towards rights, patents, copyright, and Intellectual Property generally.

Maybe the winds of change--ok, mild breezes-- can be detected.  Check out Alexander Grunder's article My Inner Struggle with Microsoft, Linux, and DRM.  Snippets:

DRM and the Automotive Industry

ABI Research has put out a press release describing their conclusions regarding Automotive Operating Systems. Snippets:

Insinuations: Microsoft, Nokia, OMA

Several news outlets covered today's story regarding Microsoft and Nokia partnering up. Here's one. Nokia will make use of Microsoft's DRM 10. The agreement also indicates future interoperability between DRM 10 and OMA, the standard for mobile phone DRM, giving Microsoft a foothold on the mobile platform.

MSFT and DRM

Brier Dudley has a longish (for a newspaper) article in the Seattle Times that overviews Microsoft's evolving security and DRM strategy. Worth a read.