Re: wired article--openmg under redevelopment

well hell! does that mean our current devices will be out of date in a
year?

On Fri, 2003-02-14 at 10:08, Christopher B. Prescott wrote:
> i don't think this has been mentioned here, (if so, i missed it) but there's
> an excellent article in wired on sony's internal battle between hardware and
> content as related to drm (5 online pages). in part it discusses openmg and
> a new version being developed. hard to decipher for certain whether the
> redevelopment will be good or bad for consumers but maybe there's hope. (i'm
> doubtful.)
> 
> the article begins at:
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/sony.html
> 
> the main discussion of the new version of openmg is on (relevant text from
> p.4 pasted below):
> 
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/sony.html?pg=4&topic=&topic_set=
> 
> More important, perhaps, Sony is developing a new version of OpenMG that's
> supposed to make it easier to transfer files from one device to another.
> 
> The new OpenMG is one of the fruits of a program Ando and Idei started more
> than a year ago to get everybody at Sony working in harmony. Known
> internally as Symphony, the effort began with a content and technology
> committee that meets a few times a year - October in New York, May in Tokyo;
> Nozoe and Ehrlich and a couple dozen other top execs, Japanese and American,
> together in a room trying to hash out the company's issues. "With the
> arrival of digital everything, you can't get away from each other," says
> Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony Corp. of America, which includes the music
> label and film studio. "We all have to invent the business plan for the
> future. And even though we have sides of Sony that will disagree, finding a
> consensus is Sony's style."
> 
> The grunt work on the copy-protection issue is done by a subcommittee that
> includes Takayuki Sasaki, who heads the division in charge of OpenMG. Sasaki
> reports to Nozoe, who's told Sony hardware execs they can't make their
> decisions in a vacuum. At a meeting last May, "the content guys beat the
> hell out of Sasaki" because they wanted additional capabilities built into
> the software, says one executive. What they covet is flexibility - the
> ability to set the rules any way they like. "You want to be able to control
> the distribution of music," Ehrlich explains. "If you want to say it can go
> to two devices, you can do that. If you want it to time out after 30 days,
> you can do that."
> 
> At this point, one might reasonably conclude that Sony doesn't need a
> symphony, it needs some headbanging.
> 
> With OpenMG X, the version being developed, Sony will no longer set blanket
> rules for its own devices; it's created a digital rights management system
> that works on any manufacturer's hardware and allows the content owner to
> set the rules. Sony wants OpenMG X to be accepted across the entertainment
> industry - an ambition that puts it face-to-face with Microsoft. "The whole
> security/digital rights management/copyright arena is a critical
> battlefield," Stringer declares. "We're racing - racing - to get to a
> solution that has an open standard so that Microsoft doesn't waltz in and
> develop the audio-video operating system."
> 
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