Subscribe RSS“At some point,” I continue, “a computer at the iTunes Store verified that I’ve already paid for this movie once, and allowed me to download this second copy. Couldn’t that computer talk to the computers that all of my other media devices trust, and tell them ‘It’s cool ... Andy already bought this. Just let him have another copy’!?!”
Historically, the digital content industry has shown as much sympathy for my problem as my goldfish.
That changed this week, when a consortium of companies took the wraps off of what they hope will be a complete end-to-end answer to the “buy once, play anywhere” problem. It’s a new standard for DRM and content-encoding called “UltraViolet.”
At this stage, it’s just a set of standards and a list of 60 companies willing to put their logos on an informational site and agree to try to make it work. There’s nothing to actually try . The consortium is calling itself the DECE (the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem) and its lineup includes every branch of media and technology that would need to be on board to create a brand-new system for content distribution here in the Push-Button World of Tomorrow. DECE includes makers of consumer hardware (such as Sony, Nokia, Samsung), movie and TV distributors (Sony again, NBC Universal, Fox), companies that provide infrastructure and mechanisms for packaging and distributing digital content (Cisco, Adobe, Comcast) and retailers (Best Buy, Netflix).
