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Philips & Sony To Purchase Intertrust DRM Tech

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the which-cup-is-under-which-ball dept.

tuxlove writes "Reuters is reporting that Philips and Sony Corp, the parents of the compact disc, teamed up on Wednesday to buy InterTrust Technologies for $453 million -- a deal expected to speed up copyright security for digital media. The acquisition by Philips Electronics and Sony of the leading U.S.-based holder of intellectual property in the field of 'digital rights management' technology is widely seen as a way to prevent Microsoft, which has been embroiled in a legal battle with InterTrust, from grabbing control of the potentially lucrative business. Philips and Sony, the electronics giants who introduced the CD format 20 years ago, said the deal would enable secure distribution of content as more films and music are sold over the Internet and other media in digital format."

8 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Corrupt CDs by yerricde · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So does this mean that Philips and Sony are now endorsing the production of digital audio discs that partially violate the Red Book standard?

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
    1. Re:Corrupt CDs by Kierthos · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I consider it much more likely that Sony and Philips will try and figure out a decent(1) copy protection scheme(2) that will not violate the Red Book standard. I mean, after all, they created the standard.

      (1) I.e. something that can't be defeated with a Sharpie.

      (2) As in a plot, which will no doubt raise prices of CDs or at least keep them from dropping, like they should be.

      Kierthos

      --
      Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
    2. Re:Corrupt CDs by nosilA · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I recently heard the CEO of Sony America give a speech, and one of the things he did, amazingly, was acknowledge that CD prices are far too high and that is contributing to the decreased sales. I believe the exact quote was "You know we have a problem when it costs more to buy a CD than a DVD."

      He also made some other statements that astonished me, supporting fair use, at least as long as Sony products were used... but it's a start. He mentioned copy protected CDs as a reality, but said that he wanted to find a solution that only keeps down the rampant copying over the internet, not your ability to make a copy to play in your car or create a mix MD for your girlfriend.

      Sony isn't going to stand up for consumer rights, but their profit motives do tend to coincide fairly frequently.

      -Alison

  2. This may not be bad after all by myov · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "We come very much from the side of the consumer and we believe the consumer should have the right to reproduce content for their own use," said Philips spokesman Jeremy Cohen.

    --
    I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
  3. Philips and Sony - A new era of coopetition? by krazyninja · · Score: 4, Interesting
    As the originators of the CD format, Philips and Sony have been worried about the shifts in the market, due to undue restriction of the music distribution by DRM. This affected their revenues from royalty on CDs on one side, and affected the content market owned by Sony on the other side. With this deal, they can now hope to level the playing field. Till now, Philips has been seen to side with the customers, but Sony has traditionally stood for copyprotection with its key2audio technology. It would be interesting to see how the two merge their interests now.
    This should also be seen in perspective with the recent news of Macrovision's acquisition of Midbar recently.

    --
    "Do something man. Right now."
  4. Invest in security, DRM! by Fastball · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Win this war on two fronts my fellow geeks. Of course oppose DRM, get your felt-tip markers out, brush up on your hexidecimal. But don't miss a chance to siphon off some dollar bills from these jokers. Companies that in the security and DRM business are going to be doing swift business whether any of us like it or the stuff they produce works. Seriously, consider buying stock in small-cap companies that show iniative in this industry.

    Why? Because secure digital media is a contradiction in terms. It's one of those rarities in life that are so misunderstood and unviable that people are going to wage a war of attrition in its name. I, for one, am going to capitalize on that. All while burning my CDs to Ogg. :)

  5. Defending their back catalog ... by LL · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The internet has suddenly exposed the distribution mechanism wide open. Historically it was easier popping down to the music store rather than advertising for the music you wanted. The sale of old CDs/vinyls through auction sites such as eBay means that what the major studios/distributors throught of as consumable good suddenly becomes a capital good. This is the difference between lease v sale and it is impossible to radically change the pricing least the consumers revolt. Attempts so far to move towards a licensing model (a la software) have been resisted by courts (cough*DVD*cough) and experiments in alternative protected media formats indicate dawning awareness that their knowledge in the retail distribution channel is at risk.

    Digital Rights Management (or restrictions for the cynical) is a mechanism for asserting their traditional control which has been weakened by P2P and parallel importing. This is a logical business decision but I suspect that defending back catalogs means less attention being devoted to new services. Why can't people mix tracks to accompany their video handhelds? Why don't people dub skits to satirise stupid commercials? Why don't people create new GC sequences of Doom-like spoofs?

    Hopefully we will be entertained by novel and innovative forms of media rather than being bombarded with rehashed old forms.

    LL

  6. Best solution I've seen so far... by leabre · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've seen a DRM for ebooks that I actually don't have any qualms with, and think it's the best that it can get and still be DRM, though I don't like DRM in the least...

    It's called Libronix. Actually, it's primarily for religious publications... Libronix is an e-book reader and format... but I haven't seen any books non-Christian on the format... but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist... http://www.libronix.com

    Here's how it works.

    The system recognizes the "resources" that you supply it, usually from download or CD-ROM and then requres a license key... license key is keyed to the "activation" of the product. Basically, it says you can access these resources but not those ones...

    You can copy the resources to any computer your want but only those PC that have a valid license can access them... if you're friend wants to, they can purchase a license from your copied file and view it themselves.

    You can install the Librinix system on any other PC for backups and when it installs, just supply the activation confirmation supplied when originally activated and then "restore" the license key backed up and you can view it on any PC you want, that has your activation code. It doesn't restrict how many times you activate but you cannot use any license that was granted with an activation not your own.

    This means you can use it on your 5 computers at home and your laptop but you can't necessarily do so on your friends PC unless you installed and used your activation and supply him your licences for each resource or collection of resources (I have 147 resources licensed to me)...

    In all, it's fairly unintrusive but goes a long way against sharing unless you want your personal info distributed on the net...

    That's the best (meaning least intrusive) implementation I've seen so far.

    Thanks,
    Leabre