News.com has an excellent picture of DRM’s role in today’s digital distribution picture, including viewpoints from Scour founder Travis Kalanick. Travis recently considered running for governor of California under a file sharing flag.
As the head of peer-to-peer content distribution company Red Swoosh, he was naturally curious to try Roxio’s new Napster download service when it launched last week. Trouble is, Napster uses Microsoft technology that doesn’t work with his iPod, the best-selling portable music player, produced by Apple Computer.
“People don’t like that,” Kalanik said. “Until these services have standards, and they’re compatible, and you can play whatever you have on whatever device you have, people are going to resort to the services that do give them that. And those are illicit.”
Incompatible anticopying technologies known as digital rights management (DRM) are being applied to everything from music files to Microsoft Word documents, and the lack of rules that can make these schemes work together is increasingly prompting calls for a standards revolution.
The problem, critics say, is that companies can all too easily turn DRM into a powerful tool for locking customers into proprietary technologies. For example, files users purchase through Apple’s iTunes music store won’t work with portable music players other than the company’s own iPod device.
Related Posts
- Software Notebook: Microsoft Zune doesn’t do ‘PlaysForSure’
- Zune Fallout Begins: PlaysForSure Getting Played?
- Mp3 to add DRM , OGG anyone?
- Closed systems leave song buyers out in the cold
- Microsoft Considering Digital Player To Rival iPod
Loading ...
