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PC World: Movie studios and technology companies have joined together to push for digital video that isn’t tied to specific devices but plays across multiple platforms. The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) aims to make it easier for consumers to use digital video with a host of devices from different manufacturers.

With the use of Digital Rights Management technology, a file purchased from any vendor would theoretically be playable on any device–as long as that device was built by a member of the consortium. In addition, consumers would have the ability to store their files online and stream them to a device from any location.

The DECE counts among its numbers all of the major movie studios–with the exception of Walt Disney –and a host of popular equipment manufacturers–with the exception of Apple.

The omission of Apple is significant. The company’s iTunes Store is the U.S.’s leading music retailer. While Apple’s efforts to sell digital video haven’t matched its success in digital music, the iTunes Store remains a prominent source of legitimate digital video downloads.

Other movers and shakers in the technology industry–including Microsoft, Toshiba, Intel, and Hewlett-Packard–are involved the DECE.

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Guardian: When Apple approached record companies about selling their music digitally five years ago, they “were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied”, according to Steve Jobs’s recollection of the process. That meant using digital rights management (DRM) – a software wrapper – to protect songs from unlimited copying. Jobs says it is crucial to the contract: “If our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.”But what’s the real effect of DRM? Last year, EMI began offering songs without it on iTunes. “The industry has finally been able to get some hard data about how removing DRM restrictions from legitimately purchased tracks affects piracy,” says Bill Rosenplatt, DRM specialist and president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies. “The statistics show that there’s no effect on piracy.”

No effect. The assertion is remarkable. If DRM does not in fact discourage piracy, then it is merely a nuisance for the user. Now the Guardian understands that most download stores will remove DRM on permanent music downloads. “We are going to be selling non-DRM music from the summer”, says Dave Elston, HMV’s digital content manager, adding that it would solve “obvious interoperability issues” – primarily compatibility with Apple’s iPod. Amazon has announced that its DRM-free MP3 download store, already online in the US, will be rolled out internationally later this year. Napster in the US is moving to MP3 for non-subscription downloads, and sources close to the company implied that the UK service will follow suit. And Apple offers DRM-free downloads for an increasing number of tracks. (…)

[full article]

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MarketWatch: Microsoft unveiled new versions of its Zune portable media player Tuesday, as the company continues its uphill battle to take market share from Apple’s dominant iPod.

The key developments for the new product line are flash memory-based devices the can compete with the wildly popular iPod nano. Microsoft made a public announcement about the new Zune models Tuesday night, following reports by a number of blogs and online news outlets.

Three new Zunes were introduced, including two models that feature flash memory, and a larger model that is hard-drive based. Flash memory enables a smaller, sleeker design, while forfeiting some of the storage space offered by hard drive-based devices.
The first Zune, released in November, is hard drive-based.

In addition, Microsoft said the new Zunes, which will be available in stores in mid-November, will be able to download, play and wirelessly share songs from a related online store that are free of restrictive digital rights management software.

The original Zune has been widely criticized, and has struggled to gain ground on the rapidly-evolving iPod, which has accumulated a range of cutting-edge features in various models since its initial release in 2001 – including flash memory and touch screens.

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Yahoo News: Apple’s recent rollout of songs without copy protection software at its iTunes Store has given consumers new flexibility, but questions have emerged over the company’s inclusion of personal data in purchased music tracks.

Are the songs that are being billed as free of so-called digital rights management technology really “DRM-free” or are there still strings attached?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a consumer watchdog group, said the embedded user information in the purchased track raises privacy issues.

Apple declined to comment.

Apple has always embedded user information — a user name and e-mail — into its copy-protected tracks. But until the market-leading iTunes Store began offering DRM-free music last week, no one raised much of a ruckus.

Technology blogs Ars Technica and The Unofficial Apple Weblog were among the first to reveal that personal data remained in the unrestricted iTunes tracks.

Their reports last week prompted speculation that the data could be used to trace copies uploaded to online file-sharing networks back to the people who originally purchased the tracks, opening those users to music industry copyright lawsuits.

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PC Advisor: Consumers may get the right to make several legal copies of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc films they’ve purchased, if a licensing agreement in its final stages reaches completion.

This concession by the movie industry follows criticism that DRM (digital rights management) technologies are too restrictive.

The agreement, if supported by movie studios and film companies, could allow a consumer to make a backup copy in case their original disc is damaged and another copy for their home media server, said Michael Ayers, a representative of an industry group that licenses the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) copy-prevention system.

AACS is used on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs, the new high-definition DVD formats, to prevent unauthorised copying of the discs.

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BBC: Bloggers “crossed the line” when they posted a software key that could break the encryption on some HD-DVDs, the AACS copy protection body has said.

Thousands of websites published the key, which had been uncovered in a bid to circumvent digital rights management (DRM) technology on HD-DVD discs.

Many said they had done this as an exercise in free speech.

An AACS executive said it was looking at “legal and technical tools” to confront those who published the key. (…)

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PCPro: The Blu-ray Disc Association has announced that following breaches of the security of the high-definition format’s AACS security technology, it has brought forward the planned release date of the BD-Plus (BD+), a more advanced anti-copying system. BD+ is an entirely different encryption system to AACS. Instead of each movie having the same encryption key, BD+ allows each disc to install a small piece of encryption software on a player, so that each disc has its own key.

A method for extracting Blu-ray keys was published in January (the rival HD DVD format, which also uses AACS, had already been cracked). As a result, the AACS licensing body last week released a security update that supplied new encryption keys for the affected discs. However this means that existing discs can no longer be played until the update is applied. BD+ would avoid this scenario, by applying the DRM to individual discs rather than movie titles.

The Blu-ray Disc Association reports that player compatibility testing has ended and that studios have had test discs for the last few months.

Once BD+ is available it will add between seven to 28 days per title to production time. 20th Century Fox is expected to be one of the firsts to implement this new technology, having slowed disc production since the attacks on AACS, and Sony Pictures is planning to be using it by the end of the year.

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Gizmodo: Microsoft, seeing all the good press Apple got for starting to sell DRM-free music in their store courtesy of EMI, has decided to do the same thing.

In the near future, Zune owners will be able to buy songs from the Zune Marketplace in what we can only assume will be DRM-free WMA files.

There’s no date or pricing set for when the big M is going to start doing this, but it will be interesting to see if they do the same higher bitrate/premium price scheme that Apple did or just replace the DRM’d versions with DRM-free versions and charge the same amount.

In any case, it’s pretty hot that the no-DRM movement actually has a bandwagon and major companies are actually jumping on it.

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Reuters: Apple and EMI’s landmark deal to sell EMI songs at higher audio qualities and stripped of copy protection on iTunes raises as many questions as it answers.

The agreement marks the first for one of the world’s most popular digital media retailer. It is also part of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ call to dismantle restrictions on digital music to boost sales and allow media to be played on devices other than its iPod devices.

EMI will be making copy protection free music available at other online outlets in the coming weeks. 

A couple of key points from the companies’ statements:

• Songs without digital rights management will cost 30 cents more.
• EMI’s wholesale pricing for premium single tracks will rise.
• EMI’s wholesale pricing for entire albums will remain the same.
• EMI music videos will be available on iTunes DRM-free at no price hike.
• iTunes consumers who have purchased copy protected songs can upgrade for 30 cents.

Here are a couple questions that come to mind:

• Do consumers care to pay a 30 percent premium for better quality and the ability to play their digital music on any player of choice?
• Will this stem piracy?
• Will other labels follow? Who’s next?
• What happened to Steve Jobs’ hard stance against variable pricing (excluding the Japanese iTunes store)?

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BBC: The EU has launched a probe into what Apple’s online music store iTunes charges users across Europe, accusing it of restricting customer choice.

Brussels believes agreements between Apple and record companies violate EU laws by preventing users in one country buying music from a site elsewhere. The move follows a complaint by UK body Which? that British users have to pay more to download songs than others. Apple said it wanted to offer a single European service but faced obstacles.

(more…)

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Engadget: It’s official: EMI music is now DRM-free. True to his word, Steve Jobs has “embraced it in a heartbeat” making it available for download from Apple’s iTunes store, first, starting in May.

It’s taken so long but now, even (one of) the Big Four realizes that DRM fails to prevent piracy yet succeeds at being an unnecessary nuisance for the vast majority of law abiding consumers.

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Gizmodo: Walt Mossburg said in his review that “Apple TV’s most formidable competitor is the Xbox 360 game console from Microsoft, which, in addition to playing games, can also play back content from Windows computers on a TV.” The Times’ techmeister David Pogue also calls up the 360 Media Extender in his review, as well some other gadgets.In our head-to-head, we took Vista Ultimate and used a 360 as a Windows Media Extender. With this setup, we came to the conclusion that the hulking white box ekes out the slimmer, shorter Apple TV—unless you have a standard XP computer with Media Center, or copious amounts of Apple iTunes DRM’d content. (…)

–Conclusion–
If you use iTunes as your primary media software and want to get your content on your widescreen TV, it’s not a bad way to do it, but that’s all it does (for now). If you already have a 360 and don’t mind Media Center, I see little point in blowing $300 (225 euro) on Apple TV if all that concerns you is bringing content stuck on your PC to your TV. You already have a $400 (300 euro) machine that does more than port media, it plays games. Great ones. And soon it’ll be an IPTV box to boot.

Apple TV is a bit more elegant in its presentation, I think, and it’s slightly easier to get to content with it, but it could do better. More importantly, it doesn’t do what it does so much better than the 360/Media Center setup that it warrants a separate purchase if you already have a 360, or even plan on getting one. Value-wise, the 360 is the winner here, at least for now.

But there are better convergence solutions on the horizon, so if you don’t need one of these now sit tight, because things are only going to get better.

(AE: for the full review, please visit Gizmodo.)

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