More on Digital Rights Management

I wonder if Sun will be successful in the following.

I completely agree with the following quote from the article.

"Today, they're based on the concept that you license content to a device,
but our belief is that if you're going to do any licensing, it should be based
on the identity of individuals," Edens says.

One issue that my friend, Chris Heller, points out is that DRM solutions are hacked pretty quickly. I think much of that is due to what's behind the quote above, especially knowing that the least common denominator is devices that aren't connected to the internet. In other words, there's a lot of incentive for cracking the DRM solution, because once you've cracked it, you've basically allowed yourself unrestricted access to everything out there.

Now, imagine if the concepts behind HTTPS and Encryption are used. You want a movie? Sign onto a web site and download it. As part of the download process, the file is encrypted using your user information (thus making it specific to you). When you use it your user information is used to decrypt the file. If somebody else takes that file and somehow figures out how to decrypt it, they have only cracked that single movie (and not all movies using that DRM solution). The economics of it are much less compelling to spend the time and energy for hacking the file.

If they can fix DRM in this way, then I think there are other opportunities for generating revenue that are too difficult to go after today. For example, imagine I'm creating a home movie and want to spice it up with a small clip of Arnold saying "I'll be back" in the terminator. If the rights were based on users, I could purchase the clip with a certain set of rights included in it (and potentially pay to have those rights upgraded for other uses). Pinnacle Studio has a rudimentary version of this with some of their effects and clips that you can include in a movie you're creating, and then unlock it.

Right now, it's merely too difficult for people to do it, but I'm sure there's a huge market for it. Another market potential is business presentations. I was present at a very compelling presentation on HR processes that used a clip from "Office Space" to illustrate potential problems (it really drove the point home). Instead of incorporating the clip into the presentation, she had the DVD at the right place on her laptop and unpaused it (not the most efficient means of doing this, but it worked for the presentation, but not when the presentation was distributed to customers).

I believe that if this issue can be solved, there will be an explosion of legally used media. Things are getting closer with the Tivo Desktop (which isn't supported by DirecTV... ARRGH), the trend toward using flat panel displays for both computers and video, and the Media Center Edition of Windows XP. The holy grail is to have a media computer that is your database of all media: TV shows, Music, DVDs, Pictures, Home movies. Using Ethernet, you can stream that content to any device at home (This works pretty well for my hacked DirecTivo... when I don't have access to the TV connected to the Tivo, I use my laptop or desktop machine to watch my recordings... works very well, except for one intermittent issue).

Here's a synopsis of what I would love to do with my media...

1. Put all my DVDs on my home computer and stream them as I want to any TV in my house. I'd like to be able to categorize them on my hard drive and navigate using a menu.
2. Allow me to watch media from either of my DVRs on any TV or computer in my house.
3. Allow me to copy or burn media from either of my DRVs so that I can watch programs when I'm on the road.
4. Allow me to better synchronize and share music across my devices (where my home computer is the primary repository). These devices include laptop computers, my home stereos, my MP3 player, and either of my cars.
5. Use media in home movies that I create. The media I create is relatively simple to share (especially since I have a media extender), but the media I've purchased is problematic (especially ON the media extender).