Managing Rights Management

Apple Opens iPhone To 3rd Party Applications

According to the AP (via Excite), Apple that it is opening the iPhone platform to 3rd party developers and applications. Now their applications will be able to run directly on the iphone. Apple infuriated developers and some iPhone users when it issued a software update September 27 that disabled unofficial... Read more →

Intertrust Announces Licensing Program for OMA and Marlin

Intertrust Technologies announced a new program for licensing its DRM patents for Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and Marlin Digital Rights Management (DRM) based consumer devices and software. The licensing program will also include patents from Sony and Philips, Intertrust's parent companies. [For ]...mobile phones, consumer electronics devices, and personal computers... Read more →

Ed Bott's Blu-ray HD DVD Update

ZDNet's Ed Bott report on his experiences with Blu-ray and HD DVD under Vista is worth a read. Snippet: Oh, and about that DRM? CyberLink’s PowerDVD software doesn’t use Microsoft’s Media Foundation Protected Pipeline (Mfpmp.exe). The PowerDVD software is perfectly able to enforce the restrictions encoded on the media by... Read more →

Paramount Dumps Blu-ray

The New York Times and The Times Online (UK) are reporting that Viacom-owned Paramount has decided to release exclusively on HD-DVD hi-def optical discs. This is interesting because Blu-ray's BD+ offers much more robust security than AACS alone. The Times Online says, in part: Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation have... Read more →

Prolegomena To Any Future Interoperable DRM

A prolegomena is (according to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company) "A preliminary discussion, especially a formal essay introducing a work of considerable length or complexity." In the expressed interest of DRM interoperability, The Digital Media Project has recently published... Read more →

Responsibility for Blu-ray's BD+ Moved June 1

With little public fanfare, responsibility for licensing the BD+ component of Blu-ray ROM disc security was moved from the Blu-ray licensing authority to BD+ Technologies, LLC. BD+ provides a Virtual Machine-based security capability that supplements AACS key management and revocation technologies. The move implies that the Blu-ray group of CE... Read more →

State Sponsored Piracy, N'est pas?

Numerous sources including the AP are reporting that the lower house of the French parliament has approved a law that would require Apple and others to open up their proprietary DRM systems. The bill will not become law until and unless passed by the French Senate. Breaking days of silence... Read more →

Sun To Publish Specs For Opensource DRM

TechWeb reports that Sun will soon publish Open Source DRM specs. Snippet: The open-source project is under Sun's Open Media Commons (OMS) initiative to license content to individuals rather than machines, such as cellular phones, MP3 players, PCs and set-top boxes. "The specifications need more work before they can ship,... Read more →

Grundner's Modest Proposal On Interoperability

Alexander Grundner, editor and publisher of eHomeUpgrade, has posted a blogicle regarding interoperability of DRM systems. The core of his idea is this: Why doesn't the industry come together (possibly with help from the CEA) to create a neutral, embedded clearinghouse firmware application that will enable media players to identify... Read more →

Looking For DRM Info?

Ridaas has built a search engine for locating technical documents related to DRM and Content protection. Ridaas is keeping his/her identity secret, but I'm permitted to say that Ridaas is a computer engineer currently interested in digital audio/video distribution and protection. For copyright reasons, Ridaas is unable to make the... Read more →