DRM format wars hot up
p2pnet.net News:- Sony, Philips, Matsushita, Samsung and Intertrust are jointly seeking some kind of DRM that will stop people from “pirating” digital music and video.
They’re looking for a system that allows files play on their hardware, “but also thwarts illegal copying,” as the BBC puts it.
“The move could mean more confusion for consumers already faced by many different, and conflicting, content control systems, experts warned,” it says, somewhat understating the situation as it points out that currently, “many online stores wrap up downloadable files in an own-brand control system that means they can only be played on a small number of media players”.
The Marlin Joint Development Association says users need, “appropriately licensed video and music on any device, independent of how they originally obtained that content”.
Read that carefully, and significantly, neither Apple nor Microsoft are part of the group, meaning there’ll be even more confusion among the Biggies than there is already.
Nor are the problems confined merely to the larger corporate entities.
Sharman Networks partner Altnet, which, with Kazaa owner Sharman and Brilliant Digital entertainment has been struggling to become part of the Korporate Klub, is still trying to foist its shabby TrueNames patent on the world.
And guess what? “The Marlin JDA will also offer a Licensing and Compliance Program and a Community Source Program to permit adopters to obtain sample code modules and licenses for the specifications on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis,” says the new group.
“The Marlin JDA plans to release version 1.0 along with the associated Community Source and Licensing and Compliance program in the summer 2005 time frame.”
While they struggle for answers, “Digital files cannot be made uncopyable any more than water can be made not wet,” as Bruce Schneier once said.
One can also again paraphrase Oscar Wilde and describe this as the unspeakable in full pursuit of the unattainable.
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See:-
thwarts - Format wars could ‘confuse users’, BBC News Online, January 21, 2005
Marlin JDA – CE and DRM Technology Leaders to Create a DRM Toolkit for Consumer Devices, Marlin Joint Development Association, January 19, 2005
TrueNames – Altnet’s bizarre campaign, p2pnet, January 19, 2005
January 21st, 2005 at 4:04 pm
Apple buys from matsushita. theyre a heavy provider of slot load drives to apple for much of their laptops and desktops (which employ slot load).
If they embed it in their firmware, you can count on people avoiding their products like the plague.
You can also count on firmware hacks in databases like the RPC1 hacks designed to remove firmware based region-lockdown.
I invite them to collaborate. By putting all their eggs into one basket, they will allow us on the consumer freedom end to concentrate a greater number of hackers on fewer targets, cracking it much faster.
The nature of intercorporate collaboration will hinder them further in addressing said breaches as well.