Wired has a story posted that didn't quite set right as I read it. They had been told by the Sony folks, that after two long years, they are pulling the plug on CDs that use their DRM technology to limit copying. The CDs let the buyers copy their music once for free onto a personal computer and use the internet to charge a fee for subsequent copying of the same disk. But here's the part that was hard to accept. The reasoning behind the discontinuation of the protection on the CDs according to Sony was: "mainly because its (Sony's) message against illegally copying CDs for uses such as in file-sharing over the internet has widely sunk in."
A quick search turned up this press release dated the same day:
Press Release:
'Coral' to Maximize Consumer Choice in Digital Entertainment:
Promotes Devices, Content and Technologies That Play Well Together
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Oct. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Seven major media and technology companies have joined together to form the Coral Consortium, a cross-industry group to promote interoperability between digital rights management (DRM)
technologies used in the consumer media market. Coral's goal is to create a
common technology framework for content, device and service providers,
regardless of the DRM technologies they use. This open technology framework
will enable a simple and consistent digital entertainment experience for consumers.
Coral's founding members are HP, Intertrust Technologies Corporation,
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., Panasonic (Matsushita Electric
Industrial Co., Ltd.), Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sony Corporation, and
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.
The Coral Consortium seeks to ensure interoperability so that today's digital music and video can be easily accessed and enjoyed, regardless of the service provider or the device. While recent innovations in digital media distribution provide consumers with new channels to acquire music and video, proprietary differences still exist in underlying DRM or content protection technology. At times, these technologies conflict and prevent consumers from playing content packaged and distributed using one DRM technology on a device that supports a different DRM technology. Coral's focus is a new technology layer that will allow existing DRM solutions to co-exist, thereby promoting content and devices that play well together.
"The classic approach to solving the interoperability problem is to either use a single proprietary platform for media distribution, or to standardize a common content protection and management technology," said Jack Lacy, Coral Consortium's president and Intertrust's SVP of Standards and Community Initiatives. "Consumers typically just want to buy, play, and use content in an intuitive manner and do not want to dwell on differences between esoteric technology features. Coral aims to provide them with such functionality and ease of use." Coral's answer is to separate content interoperability from choice of DRM technology by developing and standardizing a set of specifications focused on interoperability between different DRM technologies rather than specifying DRM technologies. The resulting interoperability layer supports the coexistence of multiple different DRM technologies and permits devices to find appropriately formatted content in the time it takes to press the play button, without consumer awareness of any disparity in format or DRM technology. Coral will provide interoperability for secure content distribution over web and home network-based devices and services.
Parties wishing to join the Coral Consortium and collaborate on building an open interoperability framework for digital media distribution should visit
http://www.coral-interop.org.
End of Press Release
Well, apparently the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing! After all Sony is listed as a founding member of the consortium. Possibly, Sony intends to pull out of the group and just doesn't know how to break the news to the others. Certainly, something not adding up here. Of course, maybe Sony has no intention of using Coral on their music CDs, what do you think? Will they honor the first remark they made to Wired?
Source: PR Newswire
