Archive for August, 2007

IF your neighborhood school isn’t yet in session, the local high school football team is probably in two a day practices.

So is the USVO team. That keeps us from doing the detailed coverage of the content distribution and watermarking spaces as we have in the past. But each week I want to take a moment and point out some highlights before summer really ends.

This week, that would be the announcement that CableLabs has signed agreements to roll out a new protocol for a DRM that will let consumers move video content around a home network. “Called DTCP-IP (Digital Transmission Copy Protection), the new spec will use DRM to lock down content to ensure that it doesn’t escape the cozy confines of cable subscribers’ homes.”

The good news is that the industry is trying to accommodate consumers so they handle digital media the way they used to handle a VHS tape or a DVD disc. This will be accomplished through more added complexity and cost to a number of participants in the system of entertainment delivery, including box makers, network providers and ultimately consumers.
More good news is that many of these schemes will leverage the efficiencies of network delivery and thus be great candidates for USVO’s MediaEscort product.

The bad news is that the dreaming for a silver bullet technology solution to the problem of theft still dominates the leadership. Cablelabs has a long history of successfully creating agreements among players with differing agendas, and they become another player in exploiting the hopes of a content industry wishing for magic.

Experience shows that the solutions to theft will need enforcement cycles to generate real costs and risks for pirates. For the forces of watermarking, the DRM dreams are a continuing frustration as we work to break through with this wisdom.