Slashdot Mirror
Companies Abandon The Sinking Ship That Is SDMI
wiggles writes: "Cryptome is mirroring a federally filed notice which discloses that a small number of companies (9) have joined the SDMI, and a large number of companies (27) 'have been dropped from the [SDMI] venture' i.e. either kicked out, or jumped ship. I put my money on the second possibility. The list of companies 'that have been dropped' is staggering in scope. Some of the more notable names include Encoding.com/Loudeye Technologies (famous infrastructure provider for streaming music), Guillemot (French maker of kickass graphic cards), I2GO.COM (American maker of high-capacity solid state mp3 players), LG Electronics (Korean makers of all kinds of consumer electronics), among others. One wonders how many more defections will follow, as the SDMI group continues to try (and fail) to achieve the impossible. As Bruce Schneier says 'Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.'"
It only takes a few large and powerful players, along with some crazy legislation to make something like SDMI a potent industry standard.
Sure, I agree: you'll be able to break any copy protections. But the industry can make it ugly and painful to do so. Just wait for a couple generations of consumer-level home electronics, and we'll find more and more protections baked into the hardware.
Yep, the consumer will pay for all this in real dollars and in their personal freedoms. All in the name of protecting the industry's profits and obsolete business models.
In that IBM is joining the venture, while 27 others are leaving.
How does this affect their "most-favored-big-company" status here on Slashdot?
With IBM on board, the announcement seems like an overall win for the consortium. But even without them, the changes are insignificant.
:-)
The companies that left are rather trivial players. That's kind of backed up by the fact that you have to explain who they are. Two dot coms whose web sites seem to be down at the moment, a graphics card company I've never heard of, and a consumer electronics company I've never heard of? (LG's probably bigger than I realize, but they don't ring a bell the way Sony, Matushita/Panasonic, Fuji, or Philips do.)
On the other hand, they've gained IBM. You don't need to explain who they are.
Now consider a few of the companies that did stay in the consortium: Aiwa, AT&T, BMG Entertainment, Casio, Compaq, Dolby Labs, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Intel, Iomega, JVC, Kenwood, Lucent, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Napster, Nokia, Philips Electronics, Pioneer, Real Networks, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Siemens, Toshiba, and Yamaha.
I'd guess they make about 95% of audio equipment sold worldwide.
I'm not arguing that SDMI is making a good, nice, or viable standard. But if you're trying to make it sound like they're in trouble simply because the quantity of companies dropped is greater than the quantity of companies added, I think you've neglected to consider the significance of those companies.
Actually, I heard that the RIAA lawyers finally snapped, and started suing their own members for copying their copy protection scheme...
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
I look forward to the days when audio devices have no audio output for 'protection'.
Customer: "I'd like to return this walkman"
Salesperson: "Is it broken?"
Customer: "well, theres nowhere to plug the headphones in"
Salesperson: "oh.. They just clip on the back, like this"
Customer: "yeah.. I tried that, but I couldn't hear anything.. Isn't there supposed to be a headphone jack or something?"
Salesperson: "Oh, No sir.. Pirates use headphone jacks to steal the audio signal.. This walkman is secured against intellectual property theft.."
Oh well, until then there's always FM radio
air and light and time and space