Bob's blog

On the internet, nobody knows that you're a dog

This is a now classic cartoon from The New Yorker in 1993:

I remembered the cartoon this morning when I was talking with an analyst about the DRM market today. Why? She asked what factors are restraining growth of digital content distributed over the internet. One of the key issues is content locked in DRM systems that is tied to devices. As networks become more pervasive, it becomes more important that there is interoperability between DRM systems and devices. I want to be authorized to play my music, not have my digital music player authorized for the content. Today it doesn't matter whether it's me or my dog operating the device - it's all about the device and it's proprietary DRM system.

Sun has been working on a different approach to DRM systems with Open Media Commons . The goals are to promote an open source, royalty free approach to DRM, enable interoperability between systems and develop a royalty free codec. We believe that innovation flourishes through openness (open standards and open source, compensation for creators (defined as appropriate for each one), all creators are users, many users are creators and user's privacy will be key.

DRM systems that recognize and respect the user will help the market grow. An open, interoperable, network centric approach will make it strong. More on this soon.

Posted at 11:31PM Mar 09, 2007 by bs in General  |  Comments[1]