Big names gang up on digital pirates

A group of the world's largest consumer electronics manufacturers are developing a digital rights management (DRM) standard to stop pirated material being played on their home entertainment systems.

The alliance, including Samsung, Sony, Philips and Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), has joined with DRM developers Intertrust Technologies to form the Marlin Joint Development Association (JDA).

The aim is to replace DRM systems used by individual companies that will only play their content, with a single standard industry-wide offering.

"Convergence across consumer internet, broadcast and mobile devices and services over the past few years has been constrained because of often conflicting proprietary DRM technologies and differing standards for each distribution mode, such as proprietary methods of music distribution to hard disk music players from the internet," claimed a statement from Intertrust.

"The Marlin JDA specifications will allow consumer electronics companies to use a single technology toolkit to build DRM functions into devices to support commonly used content distribution modes, in a way that promotes interoperability while maximising efficiency in the device architecture."

Philips and Sony, along with HP and Fox Studios, are already collaborating on a DRM standard codenamed Coral. The proposed Marlin JDA standard will be interoperable with Coral software.

The first code will be available in the summer and a Licensing and Compliance Programme and a Community Source Programme will be set up in the same time frame to allow media providers to test the system.