Father of MPEG Replies To Jobs On DRM

marco_marcelli writes with a link to the founder and chairman of MPEG, Leonardo Chiariglione, replying to Steve Jobs on DRM and TPM. After laying the groundwork by distinguishing DRM from digital rights protection, Chiariglione suggests we look to GSM as a model of how a fully open and standardized DRM stack enabled rapid worldwide adoption. He gently reminds Jobs (and us) that there exists a reference implementation of such a DRM stack — Chillout — that would be suitable for use in the music business.

Comments

They are scared.

[Anonymous Coward]

The content industry wants one universal DRM. Everyone thought that would be MS and they were happy. When Apple won the battle, they were not happy. What you are seeing by calls for Apple to license their DRM is this frustration made public and an attempt to allow MS to embrace, extend and extinguish Fairplay. Jobs called their bluff and they realize they just may well be fucked on this. Interesting times.

Re:Completely Moot

[Zeinfeld]

The way to express it to the suits is "DRM hurts your sales." I think that was the real thrust of Jobs's argument, that music companies could stand to expand their market presence immeasurably if only they promoted interoperability and ease of use--and that's just impossible as long as they insist on DRM.

Jobs and Gates are essentially doing the same thing here. They both understand that DRM is pretty bogus, they are both supporting it since that is the only way to bring the content providers onboard at the moment.

Having attended one of Leonardo's SDMI meetings I would not trust him as far as I could spit. He was the architect of the SDMI fiasco. I have no confidence in either his technical or his political skills.

Incidentally the title father of MPEG is somewhat overblown.