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Digital Rights Get More Flexible

Without digital rights management schemes that both content owners and consumers can live with, the dream of accessing any content on any device at any time will never become a reality. Today's dominant DRM scheme is Apple's FairPlay system, which lets you play songs purchased from iTunes on up to five authorized computers at a time, as well as any flavor of iPod. If you want to play a Windows Media video on your iPod, or listen to an iTunes song on your Nokia cell phone, however, you're out of luck. Their DRM schemes aren't compatible. But what if a song's digital rights were attached not to the device but to your identity, so you could log in to any device you wanted and enjoy your content?

That's the idea behind Sun Microsystems' Open Media Commons Project, which is based on an open-source, royalty-free rights management system called DReaM (for "DRM everywhere available"). Using DReaM, consumers could log in to a universal identity management system and play the same media files on any devices that support DReaM, says Stefan Rust, director of corporate and industry strategy for Sun. No vendors have announced plans to use DReaM yet.

Another promising system that ties DRM to a user's identity comes from Navio, a Silicon Valley startup that distributes online content for Fox Sports and Walt Disney Internet Group. In addition, the Marlin DRM spec, supported by Sony, Panasonic, Philips, and Samsung, is designed to let users access content across any device connected to their identity. (For more on rights management and copy protection, see "Hollywood vs. Your PC: Round 2.")

"The ideal solution would be if people had online universal identifiers that could be accessed from any device or service," says Bill Rosenblatt, editor of DRMwatch.com, a site devoted to rights management issues. But several big obstacles remain, including the lack of a standard for managing identities, the cost of authentication hardware and software, and privacy concerns "Privacy advocates really hate the idea of the "big ID database in the sky," he adds.

In the meantime, cell phone makers, wireless carriers, studios, and software giants such as Microsoft will continue to grind out DRM schemes with varying levels of interoperability. Eventually interoperable rights management has to arrive, if only because demand is too strong and the potential revenues are too rich, says John Desmond, vice president of MediaSentry Services for SafeNet, which provides antipiracy and DRM services for the record and film industries.

"There's a strong impetus across the industry to address this problem," says Desmond. "We've got a lot of mobile operators who've placed big bets on mobile music. If they can't get music off phones and onto people's PCs and stereos, it's a nonstarter for them."

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