Philips & Sony To Purchase Intertrust DRM Tech

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."

Comments

Corrupt CDs

[yerricde]

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

Re:Corrupt CDs

[Kierthos]

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

This may not be bad after all

[myov]

"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.