Business Week has an interesting article on Universal Music’s new rumored Total Music subscription offering which will assuredly use DRM. I guess this article couldn’t have come at a better or more relevant time in digital media. I just penned an article titled: DRM Demystified
last month for Streaming Media Magazine which comes out in less than a week saying the exact same thing in a lot less words [dang editors]. Of course I have been saying it at tradeshows and in forums and blogs for about 6 years now but now more than ever this story is coming to the forefront of the Monetization Mandate.
Apple looks to have used the charismatic ways of Steve Jobs to lure music executives at large into very pro-Apple business relationships with a complete lock-in on the portability of the content and ecosystem.
From: “Universal Music Takes on iTunes”
But before long, Morris [Universal Music CEO Doug Morris] realized he and his fellow music executives had ceded too much control to Jobs. “We got rolled like a bunch of puppies,” he said during a recent meeting, according to people who were there. And though Morris hasn’t publicly blasted Jobs, his boss at Universal parent Vivendi is not nearly so hesitant. The split with record labels–Apple takes 29 cents of the 99 cents–”is indecent,” Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy told reporters in September. “Our contracts give too good a share to Apple.”
It’s very clear that major media monoliths are moving away from the iTunes lock-in. These companys want to sell their content directly to users and cut iTunes and Apple out of the mix. Why pay 33% of your income to a partner when you can use DRM and sell it directly on your own site or sites to your audience? Makes perfectly good business sense and using DRM it’s easy.
Further proof that DRM is here to stay and a technology that is driving the growth of the pay-media industry at large.
Hard to believe but yet another company is laying claims to the basic fundamentals of DRM. Digital Reg L.L.C. based out of, conveniently enough, Tyler Texas, filed the lawsuit with representation in Longview Texas which is about 45 mins from Tyler.
- XBiz has a full writeup of the story here.
[WARNING: ADULT SITE. When I find a better story about this lawsuit I will post it. I am sure this week many mainstream ones will pick this story up.]
The lawsuit named Hustler, Playboy and LFP, Microsoft, Apple, Audible Inc., Sony Corp. of America, Sony Connect Inc., Macrovision Corp. and Blockbuster Inc. as defendants.
This trial will be held in the courtroom of Judge T. John Ward,U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, TX.
If you aren’t familiar with Judge Ward, his courtroom has been the scene of some of the lowliest patent trolling in the history of our country. More background on him here.
Oddly enough, it looks as though the plaintiffs lawyer is the son of the Judge or in some random coincidence his name just happens to be John T. Ward Jr.
Click Here to View The Lawsuit Filing in PDF form.
Couple Notes:
1. It’s odd they didn’t sue InterTRUST. Why not? Big gaffe there. That would include suing Phillips.
2. They didn’t sue DivX or WideVine or IBM or Sun or EMC a variety of other companies that use DRM.
3. They didn’t use the correct name for Microsoft’s DRM solution calling it Windows Media DRM… which doesn’t exist.
Gang there is _no_such_thing_as_Windows_Media_DRM. Windows Media Rights Manager is the proper name for the SDK.
This will be very interesting to watch develop. Stay-tuned for more updates here from The DRM Blog.
I guess it came as no suprise that Viacom’s CEO Philippe Dauman said recently at an antipiracy summit hosted in Washington D.C. by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the company will stick with using DRM and any copyright protection they see fit.
Kind of hard to imagine why anyone in the video space would move away from DRM unless they just want to give their videos away for free with no ads or payment. DRM is increasingly turning up in places where pundits claimed it’s imminent death just a short 6 months ago.
Without DRM there is no way to monetize portable content effectively while still managing the rights of content holders. Apple proved this. It’s just a matter of time before DRM is driving every mainstream model in the marketplace.
This is a pretty cool offering from Pando using an ad-supported model with DRM. User’s of the Pando application subscribe to the ESPN Video To Go channel using RSS and when a new clip is live Pando grabs it for you and pops it in your system tray. The clips are provided at 1.26 MBps using a 4:3 640×480 aspect ratio with, believe it or not, the ad at the _end_ of the video.
Click Here For ESPN Video To Go Site
Viewer’s get the DRM license silently and are able to watch the videos for a set period of time. Given they are news with a defined shelf-life and are not being sold the DRM makes a lot of sense. The ESPN content can be re-shared with non-Pando users via P2P networks, email and direct connections. ESPN maintains some level of ownership of the content while not being intrusive in the user’s viewing.
On the other hand, ESPN and Pando get granular wholistic stats of every view when the content is viewed via Pando or via some 3rd party distribution mechanism. User’s get free ad-supported video and ESPN gets a new form of distribution [Pando] with built in metrics for ad AND content consumption real-time. This is key. No data means no story.
It looks like 2007 is going to mark a dramatic change in how content owners deploy ad-supported media and right now DRM is critical to the success of this model. It has to be seamless and transparent and clean for the user or time and money will be wasted. Hopefully some of these models will start supporting portable transfers to phones and devices.
Pando is available here: GET PANDO NOW
BTW: This offering is powered by KeyOS.
