re: DRM at Sprint PCS
<< Is this a wireless DRM platform? If so sounds really good. Who else has this, anybody? >>
PCS approach in final third of this this article:
>> Opening the Digital Vault
Peggy Albright
October 11, 2002
Wireless Week
Eric Engstrom, the founder and CEO of Wildseed, thinks his company has the digital rights management challenge figured out.
This is his solution, in a nutshell:
- Give operators an easy way to sell content.
- Strictly control distribution and use of copyrighted material.
- Make sure the user can't edit the content.
- Make it easy for honest customers to preview and buy content via the device.
- Make the content difficult to steal.
The approach may represent what many content developers and distributors want. Granted, Wildseed's products have not yet hit the market, so it's unknown if the strategy will work in the marketplace. But Engstrom believes his company has figured out a technology and business scheme that provides an answer to the digital rights management challenge that some say is hobbling distribution of content via wireless networks.
Digital rights management is one of the industry's biggest dilemmas because the prospect of uncontrolled distribution of content between handsets and the Internet poses copyright and royalties issues for artists, software developers, operators and customers. The search for DRM solutions that protect everyone's interests while promoting information technologies has proven, in the wired world, nearly impossible. The complexity of the situation unfortunately has turned many potential business partners into adversaries and prompted various types of proposed legislation at the federal level.
Participants in the wireless Internet industry expect no less of a challenge in the mobile Internet software distribution environment, in part because wireless networks are expected, over time, to connect to all types of electronic devices. Add to that the concern, among some, that widespread use of wireless devices will propel so-called 'viral' trends or feature wars if and when users find ways to share software-based enhancements, such as ringtones or other content with each other.
'Wireless devices are promiscuous,' says Talal Shamoon, a founder and executive vice president at InterTrust Technologies, a company that specializes in digital rights management software solutions. 'It's an area where new technologies and disruptive technologies break quickly and stick.'
But Engstrom eschews the notion customers will use their phones simply as browsers to seek and download content. Instead, he embraces a conviction that customers will eagerly tweak their handsets with add-on features for which they've already indicated a preference. It's a narrow and highly controlled approach to digital content distribution, but it's simple enough to appeal to parties on all sides and make money for the various business partners, Engstrom believes. 'Everybody knows their assets are protected,' he says.
A Narrow Approach
The narrowly defined approach that Engstrom and his colleagues are using at Wildseed offers one example of how companies can put a tight a lid on perceived risks.
The service begins with store-bought products, the phone and an assortment of inexpensive 'smart' faceplates, called 'smart skins,' that bring customization capabilities to a phone.
The smart skins will be sold as accessories that snap around the phone and come with software-based content that customers can view via the faceplate or by copying to the device. Wildseed gives the customer unlimited use of the material when running it from the faceplate and it also lets customers copy the content once from the faceplate to the device. Once the content has been copied, it can't be copied again. The approach avoids Web browsing, enabling customers to screen, preview and download content via a single button on the phone. All software is encrypted to prevent misuse.
While Wildseed is a startup that has not yet announced carrier partners, it says the phones will hit the market in 2003.
InterTrust, which wants to enable DRM on a broad and open-ended scale, has a body of patents and technology reference designs that it says can be licensed for use in content, networks, devices or services to prevent unauthorized distribution of all kinds of content. Sony is a customer, recently signing a $28.5 million deal to use InterTrust inventions to develop new formats and platforms for digital content distribution. That deal extends to Sony Ericsson wireless handsets, Shamoon says.
Nokia has taken a 5 percent share in InterTrust, although it has yet to license InterTrust patents, Shamoon says. The handset manufacturer also has, separately, formed a partnership with IBM to jointly develop a DRM solution. The Open Mobile Alliance, of which both Nokia and IBM are members, is working on a DRM middleware specification that, in its initial release, will cover things such as ringtones and picture messages.
Wildseed and InterTrust, with their narrow and wide-ranging DRM approaches, respectively, illustrate the variability of approaches organizations can take to implement DRM into their business practices.
Do-It-Yourself
Then there's the build-your-own approach, which Sprint PCS has taken with its content vault, which is an online content catalog, or server, that its 3G customers can use to screen, access, download or even store software products they don't want to store on their phones. The system manages customer billing for the software and distributes royalties to content partners. It tracks the terms under which each customer licenses a program and monitors the customer's usage of each product to make sure fees are assessed and paid appropriately.
Sprint developed the custom architecture working closely with Sun Microsystems. The system has the flexibility to allow users to download content repeatedly if they purchase such rights, which removes customer usage barriers, says Eric Chu, group manager for industry marketing in the software systems group at Sun Microsystems.
But not even Sprint's approach satisfies everyone. Walt Disney Internet Group, for example, has partnered with AT&T Wireless and Sprint PCS to distribute content via cellular phones, but it is drawing the line at multimedia services.
'We re not prepared to launch MMS content in the market until we're confident that for each particular handset and network that it's secure,' says Kim Kerscher, director of communications for WDIG.
Because of reluctance on the part of content companies such as WDIG, Konny Zsigo, president of WirelessDeveloper.com, doubts the whole DRM business environment will grow very quickly. 'It's a big deal. It's important, but I think it's rather complex. I don't expect to see lots of people throwing solutions into the ring on an ad-hoc basis,' he says.
On the other hand, he adds, with Sprint taking a lead on DRM, 'that solution might well come out of the wireless industry before it comes out of Hollywood.' <<
- Eric - |
