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A Wireless Alliance Forms
MikeD83 writes "A wireless alliance has formed between the likes of Nokia, Microsoft, Intel, Walt Disney Co., and almost 200 other companies. Their mission is to develop an open standard for how wireless phones can be used on any network." Whoo-hoo! DRM for cell phones! The group's website has some more information.
isn't it called the WAP forum?
why with all these players how can it fail?
four-oh-four
The article says,
The common standard also will solve such business issues as digital rights management and payment, officials said.
It's down at the bottom. You know, so no one will notice it.
</paranoia>
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
1) As has been previously stated (and will be again ad nauseum) some of the major players in this consortium have a horrible track record of user's rights. You can be sure the ulterior motive of this group has to do with profits than with end-user convenience. Technically, sure, that is the purpose of business (big or otherwise) but I don't remember anyhing in the rules the says they can't do things for the greater good...
2) Certain parties who shall remain nameless (*cough* Microsoft *cough*) have long had a problem with "maintaining standards." Maybe being part of the defining committee will go some ways towards alleviating the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome, but ultimately I think that any mythical "standards" produced from this will invariably produce a dozen variants of the original. Anyone who's used IE's interpretation of HTML knows this...
Essentially, I suppose I'm saying that when this many 800lb. gorillas get into a room together, the only thing that came come out of it is a more worries for us bananas^H^H^H^H^H^H^H customers.
Whoo-hoo! DRM for cell phones
You might be joking, but the horror is that DRM actually work well with mobile phone.
I've been working with people bidding projects for mobile computing. Mobile business is an area where you find eveyrthing proprietary.
First you must sign NDA to be allowed to program a GSM sim, then when you've done with the sim you must sign a partnership(aka pay them big bucks of money) agreement with telcos and mobile makers so that they'd ever consider recognize the sim cards you made. Otherwise they can always deny your sim from accessing their network. The problem is that when you asked one Telco/mobile maker to sign an agreement with you, they'll probably include in the agreement forbid you from signing a similar agreement with their competitors. There goes the market penetration.
That's why you don't see much special purpose sim card around. Unlike PC market, the business of mobile markets are controlled by the telcos and mobile makers.
DRM would probably not work in PC market, but it would succeed in such a business environment where the business are controlled by several big corps.
I initially thought this was a bit of flamebait from Michael, but check this out from their FAQ: