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Technology Stocks : e.Digital Corporation(EDIG) - Embedded Digital Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Savant who wrote (6192)	6/29/1999 11:56:00 PM
From: bob	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18366

We get a good mention here. Online Music Standard Set Industry group develops specification that copy-protects digital tunes. by Marc Ferranti, IDG News Service June 28, 1999, 4:27 p.m. PT More than 100 recording companies, consumer electronics groups, and computer technology vendors have moved to resolve controversial issues of copyright protection for music on the Internet: They say they have agreed on a technical specification for portable devices that store music digitally. The companies, all belonging to the Secure Digital Music Initiative industry group, adopted a technical specification for portable music players Friday in Los Angeles. The spec is under final technical review and is expected to gain final ratification at an SDMI meeting in Japan July 7 and 8, SDMI representatives say. The preliminary approval is significant because it opens the way for holiday-season release of a new generation of players carrying the blessing of the powerful recording companies. Because the technology has the backing of the major recording labels, you can expect virtually all new music from major artists to be available at the major music Web sites, industry insiders say. The SDMI agreement also helps ease infighting among recording companies and music device manufacturers and Web sites that use the MP3 music compression format. MP3 is the most popular format but it does not provide copyright protection. The controversy over this lack has prevented major companies and artists from going full bore into online distribution of music. Piracy Limits Participation As a result, plenty of music is available on the Web, but music lovers who want to download tunes from major artists often must resort to scrounging around obscure sites for pirated music. You can order music from major artists, but it is still shipped the old-fashioned way rather than downloaded. "The benefit [of the SDMI specification] for consumers is that they will be able to go to just a few places on the Web to get really good content, instead of having to search everywhere, and maybe go to sites that have pirated copies of music," says Rachel Walkden, director of audio for Lucent Technologies' New Ventures Group. Lucent has its own compression format, called Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder. It is working with e.Digital to develop a hardware reference platform for major manufacturers using EPAC and the new SDMI specifications. In addition, IBM and Sony have teamed to develop pirate-proof music formats. Sony announced in April that it will configure an upcoming line of digital devices to play song files encoded with IBM's Electronic Music Management System. Diamond Multimedia's Rio, which plays music downloaded from the Web, and competing devices have spooked the recording companies. Most of the devices use the non-copyright-protected MP3 format, and the Rio player was the target of a failed attempt by recording companies to legally block its release on the market. Here for the Holidays SDMI representatives hope the organization's new specification will resolve the recording companies' copyright-protection concerns without the need to block use of MP3--which, given MP3's popularity, would be virtually impossible, according to industry insiders. The SDMI was formed last December to create a specification for portable devices. Members have been working overtime to meet a June 30 deadline, set to allow ample time for development and manufacture of devices for holiday sales. To give manufacturers time to gear up to adopt the new specification, it will be implemented in two phases, say SDMI representatives. Phase I will support new portable players. Phase II will add new screening technology designed to block the downloading of pirated music. SDMI members, including virtually all the major labels, will deliver new music online using the Phase II version of the specification. To download this music, you'll have to upgrade Phase I devices to Phase II devices, but this will be a software upgrade, according to SDMI officials. The screening technology that is the core of Phase II probably will not be available for at least another year. Both Phase I and Phase II devices will be able to download songs in older, non-copyright-protected formats, SDMI representatives say. This is a compromise that finally allowed agreement on the specification, according to SDMI insiders.