Thursday February 19 6:08 PM EST
UPDATE: Intel, Sony, Others Reach Digital Anti-Piracy Pact
(updates with announcement of pact, details)
By Sue Zeidler
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Major consumer electronics companies Thursday moved to prevent digital pirating of music and movies on the Internet, easing fears in Hollywood about potential theft of its most valuable offerings.
In a breakthrough for the entertainment industry, Intel Corp., Sony Corp., Hitachi Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. announced a joint encryption -- or encoding --standard aimed at protecting digitally distributed music and videos.
"The companies have all agreed on a method that can be used to protect digitized content in a way that can be applied to both consumer electronics and computer products," said Jim Reilly, a spokesperson for Matsushita Electronics.
The announcement was welcomed by the entertainment industry, which is concerned about the threat of cyberpiracy. "Developing the ability to protect digital content in transit is a very important step in delivering the highest quality in picture and sound to the consumer," said Chris Cookson, executive vice president of Warner Bros.
"We welcome the progress the computer and consumer electronics industries have made in bringing this proposal and look forward to its rapid review," Cookson said.
Fearful of copyright theft resulting from access to the Internet, record companies have hired investigators to surf the net for "CD pirates" as lawmakers and computer makers grapple with ways to protect such works in the digital age.
Industry experts have estimated the potential damage from digital piracy at billions of dollars in lost sales.
Earlier sound recordings on vinyl records or cassettes were made with analog recordings, which were harder to copy without losing a lot of quality in the duplication process.
But with digital recordings, users can more easily download a digital sound file on the Internet, copy it and endlessly duplicate without any degradation in quality.
Movie studios and record companies have been seeking a single way to protect their copyright material, fueling debate among leading electronics manufacturers about whether to deploy a common standard.
The proposed encryption technology would be transparent. In other words, it would have no effect on television sets, PCs, set-top boxes, digital VCRs and digital video disk (DVD) players in people's homes, the companies said.
Using various encryption techniques, the method would protect movies and music while it is sent from companies to people's homes by scrambling the content, making it impossible to descramble without a particular software key.
"The recording industry looks forward to evaluating the proposed solution and working to achieve the robust digital security that we need, and we are pleased that this joint proposal brings us one step closer to realizing this goal," said David Stebbings, senior vice president of technology for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Intel, the world's largest computer chip company; Sony, whose businesses range from movies and music to consumer electronics; and other members of the alliance had worked toward individual solutions before deciding to team up.
Reuters/Variety
^REUTERS@
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