Digital media now in easy "ecosystem"

a new type of DRM that would allow customers more flexibility in playing content on multiple devices. The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) would establish a list of devices in your personal "domain" (unrelated to web domains), and minimizes or removes restrictions within that domain. TechCrunch summarizes DECE and notes that many of the big corporations have decided to support it.
"The ecosystem envisioned by Singer et al revolves around a common set of formats, interfaces and other standards. Devices built to the DECE specifications would be able to play any DECE-branded content and work with any DECE-certified service. The goal is to create for downloads the same kind of interoperability that's been true for physical products, such as CDs and DVDs. Where it gets really interesting, though, is the group's stated intention to make digital files as flexible and permissive as CDs, at least within the confines of someone's personal domain. Once you've acquired a file, you could play it on any of your devices -- if it couldn't be passed directly from one DECE-ready device to another, you'd be allowed to download additional copies. And when you're away from home, you could stream the file to any device with a DECE-compatible Web browser."




10 years? Try 100.
Radio will kill the live music industry. Vinyl will kill radio and live music. Home taping will kill vinyl, radio and live music. Copying CDs will kill music. MP3s will kill music.
It wasn't true back then and it isn't true now. People want to listen to music, plain and simple. The RIAA know that damn well, they're not that stupid. Quite why they're so keen to describe every new piece of technology as the thing that will eventually kill them, I don't know. Some sort of control thi


DRM is inherently defective and bad for consumers. (Score:3, Interesting)
by Dirtside (91468) on Saturday September 13, @12:35PM (#24991211) Homepage Journal
Repeat after me: All DRM is inherently defective and bad for consumers. Consider the baseline: completely unfettered media. You can do with it whatever you want.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A group of media industry companies said it is planning to build a digital world where video devices and content websites play together in perfect harmony, and consumers can safely store their digital content and access it anywhere in the world.

The consortium of Hollywood studios, retailers, service providers, and consumer electronics and information technology companies, called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, or DECE, is working on a "uniform digital media experience" but won't announce details until the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

The consortium said it will call for interoperability of devices and websites, and usage rules that allow consumers to copy content onto household playback devices and to burn their content to physical media, DECE President Mitch Singer said.

The plan also would provide customers a "rights locker" or virtual library where consumers' digital video purchases would be stored for retrieval in a manner similar to accessing an email account, Singer said.

The consortium plans to design a logo that will be placed on products and websites to let consumers know that those products and services are compatible with DECE standards.

"We will be developing a ... specification that services and device makers can license. They can use the logo to associate their device, knowing that when the consumer goes to buy the content, they know it will play," Singer said.

The new digital framework would turn Apple Inc's "closed" iTunes model on its head, Singer said.

"This is very different from the Apple ecosystem," he said. "We encourage Apple to join the consortium. We don't ever anticipate Apple going away or this consortium replacing it


"They knew that when they brought (a DVD) home, they could play it on the device of their choice," Coblitz said. "We see this vision of 'buy once, play anywhere.'"

The consortium includes Alcatel-Lucent, Best Buy Co Inc, Cisco Systems Inc, Comcast, News Corp's Fox Entertainment Group, Hewlett-Packard Co, Intel, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, Microsoft Corp, General Electric Co's NBC Universal, Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures, Philips, Sony Corp, Toshiba, VeriSign, and Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros Entertainment.


All forms of DRM add fetters to that situation without giving any additional abilities or functionality. There is absolutely nothing that can be done with DRMed media that cannot be done (in a technical sense) with unfettered media.

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