Sun Microsystems want to share their DReaM DRM scheme

August 22, 2005

Calling this the
"participation age" Sun's chief operating officer during a keynote speech
at the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit in Aspen, Colorado,
expressed his desire to share their plans for a cross industry, royalty free
DRM.

He feels that the world is a changin' and the
plethora of DRM schemes are hampering the progress of the participation age and
act as tollroads on the information highway.

As part
of the new initiative, Sun will share the entirety of its Sun Labs program
called Project DReaM, or "DRM everywhere available." The program consists
of an interoperable DRM architecture that implements standardized
interfaces and processes for protecting digital content.

Also included in the project
is Sun's Java Stream Assembly, which is designed to reduce
complexity in building and managing network-enabled video streams, and Sun
Streaming Server, which dishes up standards-compliant media over the
Internet.

It remains to be seen whether
technology companies will embrace the Open Media Commons rather than the
other DRM options that have come out of companies like Microsoft , Sony ,
Apple and InterTrust. To succeed completely, Sun will have to win adoption
from digital content rights holders and device makers as well as from
cellular carriers and other tech
companies.

We have to admit, right now
it's a nightmare for the consumer due to all the different DRM "solutions" out
there designed to protect content providers. In some cases such as making DVD
backups, it criminalises the public as we must defeat the DRM in order to
provide a means to rip the disk for burning to blank. In other cases, it causes
us to waste money by purchasing the "incorrect" player for music only to
discover it's incompatible with our favorite download service. You
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Source: Top Tech News