All the latest UK technology news, reviews and analysis
|
|
|
23 Aug 2005
Sun Microsystems said today that it wants to create an open and free digital rights management (DRM) technology.
The company's president and chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz unveiled the new project called Dream (DRM everywhere available) at the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit in Colorado.
Digital rights management technology ensures access to digital content for legitimate users while blocking access to individuals who try to access the data in violation of copyright licences. Many companies have developed DRM technologies, including Apple, Microsoft and Real. , meaning that a song purchased in Apple's iTunes music store can't be played in media players from Microsoft or Real.
However, these technologies aren't compatible
Such an abundance of DRM technologies is holding back the adoption of digital media, claimed Schwartz.
"We must not allow progress to be stifled by clumsy, self-defeating internet tollgates in the form of a monolithic, closed digital rights management system. "
Schwartz expects that by creating an open source DRM technology, he can set a standard that is used across the industry.
"We fundamentally believe that a federated DRM solution must be built by the community, for the community."
Dream had been under development by researchers in Sun Labs since 2002. Sun has made the software available under the common development and distribution licence (CDDL), an open source licence governed by the enterprise computing vendor.
The technology allows DRM technologies to interoperate. It enables licences to be issued to individual users rather than centring protection around devices based on manufacturers.
In additional to the interoperability technology, Dream contains software to allow for video delivery.
Latest stories from Law
Related articles
Related jobs
Poll
Are you confident that the UK's IT infrastructure is secure from attack in the wake of the Flame malware revelations?
Orange and Intel talk us through the ins and outs of their San Diego smartphone
Connect with V3.co.uk
Social networking is almost ubiquitous. This white paper examines the benefits and risks and it looks at the different ways companies can reconcile them
The importance of understanding your infrastructure
Credit Risk Modeller, SAS, London, £50,000 Title- Credit...
My London client is looking for an experienced Programme...
My leading client is looking for a number of excellent...
My client, a leading international name in Manufacturing...
Keep up to date with the latest products, services and technologies from the world's leading IT companies. IThound.com brings you over 2,000 white papers, case studies and analyst reports.
Do you agree?
HOw can it work?
It doesnt matter if you can see the source code, ultimately it's the strength of the authentication and encryption mechanism that will protect the content from misuse.
Posted by: LM 25 Aug 2005
Dream
it'll be good. especially for more independant artists
Posted by: simon 23 Aug 2005
How can "open" DRM possibly work?
Isn't one of the main points of DRM to be secure? If everyone can see the code and see how it works, then... uh... how secure is that? Who's gonna adopt an open DRM technology that is so easily breakable?
Posted by: Alex 23 Aug 2005
Open does not mean insecure
Actually in terms of DRM it tends to mean exactly the opposite, schemas that are open and peer reviewed tend to last better than closed schema's. Similar to standard crypto schema' really
Posted by: eoin fleming 23 Aug 2005
What is meant by open
I presume that by "open" what is meant is that the algorithm is public and open to scrutiny like encryption algorithms. The fact that the algorithm is understood does not mean that one can easily break into encrypted content anymore than publishing the DES3 algorithm means that one can easily break that.
Posted by: Mark Simpson 23 Aug 2005