Archive for December, 2007

It is no coincidence that the most hopeful and generous of our holidays are during these shortest days of the year. Somewhere back in early tribal times, someone figured out that the thing to do with these long cold nights was celebrate whatever good fortune we had, focus on the gifts of the moment and hunker down for the winter.

Today we live, at least those of us with the access to all the things and technologies that make this channel of communication possible, in a time of unsurpassed affluence and prosperity. Humans thrive. While there are many hungry, at war, and suffering is widespread, more people live well today than ever. The poor people in the United States no longer suffer from lack of food, but from poor quality food that makes obesity a correlation to poverty. Medieval kings did not have access to the horn of plenty that is the average supermarket of middle class western civilization.

Yet in our affluence we still suffer insecurity of a wide variety. Amidst all these threats to our sense of safety, the theft of motion pictures seems relatively insignificant.  Maybe that is one reason why the pace of progress in our marketplace seems so slow. Those of us working this market for USVO want to let you know that this pace is very frustrating to us.  We see the benefits of our product clearly, and can’t wait to get on with the build out of what we know will create a lively flowing market of content that will be a boon to many aspects of our society. Through communications and sharing comes understanding. Through the exchange of ideas and currency grows appreciation of others as well as prosperity, and in broader prosperity comes security.

So in a small way, we see our product, and the service it provides, as being part of the larger picture of bringing peace and prosperity.

There are still lots of activity in this space. NHK has announced a watermark development. Lawmakers have thrown content distributors a fuzzy bone.  Streaming Media has published a comprehensive explanation of the various DRM technologies. Note that SmartMarks are compatible with ALL of them. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article analyzing why more of us aren’t buying the toys that will let us watch internet video on our televisions. The Neilson people have announced that they will use fingerprinting to add content filtering to their portfolio.  Remember that Neilson is in the business of selling information to broadcasters about how many people watch their programs for the purpose of setting ad rates. This is about Neilson getting into the online ratings business, not content security.

Lastly I would like to share a bit of holiday technical humor. Black Box Technical Services has made a holiday video that makes fun of propeller heads ( and by extension themselves).  May we all have the security and appreciation of the season to be able to enjoy a bit of humor at our own expense. Happy Holidays!