Home electronics giants launch antipiracy strategy

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group is aimed at creating specifications that let different rights-management systems talk to each other, a little like a translator between native speakers of different languages.

Marlin will instead develop its own rights-management system, a rival to the technology used by Microsoft or Apple. It will support a variety of forms, ranging from cell phones to digital music players to TiVo-like video recorders, the group said.

The Marlin system could be wrapped around a standard audio or video format, such as the Advanced Audio Coding or MPEG AVC video format, Shamoon said. It will also draw on the Coral work, so that it will be compatible with any other system using that group's interoperability techniques.

The group will ultimately produce specifications that will let its own members and other companies build compatible systems. It will also create a site with source code that companies can use to jump-start their own development projects.

The Marlin effort is starting considerably behind Apple and Microsoft, whose formats are widely used in the market already. But if the Marlin technology is built consistently into the products of four of the biggest consumer electronics devices, it could shift the market substantially, analysts say.

Nevertheless, the addition of a yet another flavor of copy-protection technologies risks alienating consumers still further, GartnerG2 analyst Mike McGuire said.

"There is potential there. They all have lots of resources," McGuire said. "But coordinating their efforts, and creating something that consumers will actually accept, is something else."

[simcity1976]

Shoot me now

This is going to end up bad for the market, I can already hear all of my friends say things like: "I wonder if this new release movie will play on my brand dvd player, or on my computer".

They should have (1) open standard, and if a better one comes out make that open standard. kind of like vcd, and svcd.

[mudphud]

Too late?

Of course we wouldn't have this problem if this same group
hadn't been so greedy to begin with. They wanted absolute
control of when and where you could play their products and
new ways to charge us. Now they are upset they don't own the
standard. They only licensed content to Apple to start with
because they didn't see it as possibly being successful. Good
luck.

[bobby_brady]

This will bomb!

What a joke.
Stick to mp3's.

[jhorvatic]

iPod user can't shop anywhere else even if they wanted

iPod users or Mac users in general can't shop anywhere else
even if it was possible. All the other services are PC ONLY!
You can't even enter there sites let alone buy any music even if
the iPod was open. Microsoft requires IE 6.0 which Microsoft
convienently doesn't make for Macs. So why should Apple open
there doors when everyone else has there doors LOCKED!