[opendtv] News: Anticopying fight threatens mobile music and video
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 07:42:19 -0400
http://broadcastengineering.com/newsletters/scm/20050510/#
Anticopying fight threatens mobile music and video
May 10, 2005 8:00 AM, Strategic Content Management e-newsletter
A dispute over antipiracy technology is looming over the emerging
mobile phone content business, with the telcos claiming that new
music and video services could be derailed as a result, CNET News
reported.
At issue is a set of technologies aimed at protecting content from
being indiscriminately copied after being sold through mobile phone
networks, a critical component of the new content services if record
labels and movie studios are to sign on.
For more than a year, the mobile industry has been converging on a
standard set of antipiracy technologies, which could help avoid the
fragmentation that separates Microsoft and Apple Computer products in
the PC world. But now patent holders including Sony and others have
put a price tag on that technology, and some of the biggest phone
companies say it's too expensive, CNET reported.
The carriers have threatened to look elsewhere - a development that
could help rival copy-protection developers such as Microsoft - even
if it slows down the release of their services and leads to
incompatible products.
The rights-management component is an obscure but critical piece of a
business that is attracting millions of dollars of investment in Asia
and Europe, and is likely to launch in the United States later this
year, CNET said. Cell phone carriers that have spent billions on
wireless high-speed data spectrum are eager to recoup their
expenditure, and are turning to music and video downloads as their
most promising early services.
Already a handful of mobile download services similar to Apple's
iTunes Store have launched overseas. Vodafone has launched music
stores across Europe, with the help of France's Musiwave. Germany's
T-Mobile is offering short versions of songs, while Japan's KDDI has
predicted that music downloads will add $70 million to its annual
bottom line in just a few years.
The start-ups that power these services have used a variety of
technologies to protect their content. Some, like Seattle-based
Melodeo, use their own digital rights management. Others are using
technology based on the standards developed by the Open Mobile
Alliance (OMA).
The OMA technology is now turning out to be a hurdle, however. As
with other standards, the underlying technology is actually owned by
other companies, in this case Sony, ContentGuard Holdings, InterTrust
Technologies, Matsushita Electric Industrial and Koninklijke Philips
Electronics.
An organization called MPEG LA is handling the overall licenses for
those companies, as it is for other similar patent groups. In
January, that group suggested that companies that want a license
should pay $1 per device using the anti-piracy technology, as well as
one percent of any transaction such as a song download that is
protected by the tools.
Carriers and handset makers almost immediately said no. The Group
Special Mobile (GSM) Association, which represents many of the
biggest overseas carriers, issued a call for proposals from other
rights-management companies.
In response, MPEG LA issued a new proposal last week, asking
manufacturers to pay 65 cents per device, and carriers or other
services to pay 25 cents for each user who downloads any content -
whether a single file or 10,000 songs - in the course of a year.
The GSM Alliance said last week that the terms remained "unreasonable
and unworkable," and said it would continue to examine technologies.
After its last call for proposals, 14 different companies submitted
copy-protection tools for evaluation, the group said.
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