There is a confluence of two major movements in media which Amazon has managed to combined this week perfectly to take a key step forwards in online video ‘ the two concepts are the cloud and a rights locker.
We have read a number of stories about the Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Players for both the web and for Android, written from the point of view of the drift towards the cloud and one that mentions DECE, the original rights locker idea, but we think, like the song says, ‘you can’t have one without the other.’
Well this is not strictly true. A right locker is a dispensation outpost for content that can look up if you have actually paid for that content, and give permission for another copy to be issued to you. Some software rights lockers exist but are very limited, you can download a spare copy if your copy gets deleted, and usually you have to pay a separate and extra payment over and above the purchase to register for the locker.
A content right’s locker, especially in the modern digital world, can also take care of upgrades and quality issues, so that if you buy a PC copy of some content, you can enable business models such as counting all or some of the money you paid for that version to go towards buying a better quality HD version which will work with both your PC and your HD connected TV.
A rights locker puts the price of the storage into the original purchase so that as you buy content, particularly music or video, it can retain the version you have bought and under secure delivery give you another equivalent copy. It can also allow key business models such as play a certain number of times, or buy for a year, arranged by keeping your rights described in a detailed rights statement, probably using a rights language, which transactional systems can interrogate. It also manages the security itself.
Now with an internet that is arguably ready to stream commercial Netflix class HD video content, then that model of having a rights locker becomes far simpler. Instead of the rights conversation happening with one central server, and it then passing on permission to a remote content service to ‘allow’ another download, an actual streamed copy can sit in the locker, as it were, ready to be streamed again and again. So as the cloud comes along, it makes rights lockers far easier than when they were focused on downloads.
It should take away grief for the customer. So for instance, right now, by buying songs from iTunes in MP3 format, but storing them on an Android phone, there is no official ‘route’ onto the phone, and the transition process is clunky. If there is a piece of software on the locker that decides what device you want to stream it to , it should then be able to allow the stream, select the most appropriate format for the content, and either transcode to that format or have a stored version in that format, and simply select it, and work in a multi-device world. So you may buy video for your iPad, but want to play it on a TV set and it will check you are allowed to and make sure it happens for you to the best of its ability.
This may not appear to be a big deal, but it is. Actually cloud based services are a big deal and will eventually eat into the massive growth we are seeing in things like Flash memory. Right now we have to store content on portable devices and they boast enormous, but often very different storage amounts, like 64GB on perhaps a top end phone but maybe 4 GB on a cheaper version of the same phone. So you get syncing issues because your music or video library can’t sync fully with your device. Let’s say you have built up your library on a 64GB device but want to take some of your music on your cheap MP3 player for the day. Sync doesn’t work, it decides that you can fit all the content on, and when you can’t it gives up and none of it goes across so you have to do it manually. Streaming from the cloud sorts out those issues, but right now all streams would mean that a portable cellular device has to be in good contact with the internet at all times, so it has to be a hybrid set of options to stream or download.
But this will mean that Amazon can focus on selling content anywhere, and having a relationship with all content sellers, where it offers to store it for you. Then you can keep up to 5GB which Amazon will give you for free (not enough, not nearly enough) so all of your music can be stored in one place for ALL of your devices.
This can be upgraded to 20 GB free with the purchase of any MP3 album, so we are getting closer to this being enough, for music at least.
What some bright spark at Telecom Paper worked out was that this is a rival for the Sony inspired UltraViolet service based around the DECE (Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem) which was the first commercial attempt at a content rights locker. The new Amazon acquisition in Europe, LoveFiLM has ceased to be a DECE member, it said. It looks to us that both Amazon and Disney, are now breaking away on their own to provide their own content rights locker while UltraViolet has the backing of a whole swathe of content owners and technology firms and so you might think of it as the standard. But success is is down to how it signs partnerships and when it is ready whether or not UltraViolet actually gets off the ground. Like so many design by committee options, a group is never as fast moving as a single player, and Amazon cannot claim to have done anything other than copy this idea, but has launched it first.
At Faultline we posited the idea of a rights locker about five years before anyone came up with that term, so the idea is fairly easy to happen across, it is the maturity of the technology that’s at issue. Interestingly Apple’s DRM free iTunes content can do little to avoid being a part of this type of move, and can only keep its DRMed content out of any given contents locker by refusing to play ball ‘ something we would expect from Apple.
Back in October 2009 Disney made its position clear when it pre-announced a work in progress called Keychest, while DECE had its first airing as in idea in September 2008, it is still not here.
DECE claimed the backing of Alcatel Lucent, Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast, Deluxe Digital, Fox, HP, Intel, Lionsgate, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Panasonic, Paramount, Philips, Samsung, Toshiba, VeriSign and Warner Brothers. We assumed that Disney didn’t give its blessing because it was going to take too damn long with a group like that at the helm.
But the world does not want a set of incompatible rights lockers, where one will hold content for your Apple devices and another for your Disney content and another for the content you buy from Amazon. Customers want one cloud space to keep content of all types and Amazon might just be the type of organization who’s needs align with user sentiment.
What needs to happen in these rights locker situations, is that a consumer registers his or her devices, and that these devices are registered in turn with an umbrella technical organization which effectively acts as a gatekeeper for content. So far we’re not quite sure that this is how Amazon sees it although UltraViolet clearly does.
And it’s been clear for a long time that Disney lives in a Disney centric world, the same as Apple lives in an Apple centric world. Both of them think that not only do consumers think the same way, but that where they don’t, Apple or Disney have the power to force consumers to think their way.
Apple has so far proved that it DOES have this power. People WILL buy content from Apple to use solely on Apple products. But in our mind Disney does not. Amazon on the other hand is another game entirely and there are many people who just use Amazon features as and when they come across them, partly because of its even handed nature when dealing across multiple content sources and multiple content types. It just works.
An Amazon cloud strategy does not mean that you cannot use DECE UltraViolet as well, but there is an essential difference that the cloud has wrought. Both DECE and Keychest need members and it needs them to adhere to the same rights language and expressions and open a dialog with central DECE or Keychest servers. They are swapping rights and this may be hard to make work. How would Comcast feel if someone asks it for a VoD film and UltraViolet says ‘Yes he has the rights, because he bought it on iTunes,’ that would prevent Comcast getting its fair share and it would be entitled to say, ‘We don’t care, if it hasn’t been bought from us, he can’t have it,’ Comcast might reply.
Now that can’t happen in Amazon because it has acquired all the rights and can offer them in DVD, DVD rental (LoveFilm) or online, and it can just report back to the content owners how much money each of them are due. What it is taking way from content owners is the opportunity to force someone to pay for content not once, not twice, not three times, but even more times ‘ watch a film in a cinema, rent the DVD, rent the Blu-Ray disk, buy the DVD, see it on HBO and watch the 3D version later, before paying for a Pay TV service to show it as a repeat. Instead they may just pay once for HD access at Amazon, and have it for life.
Rights lockers will require that content is very expensive to buy FULL rights, because ALL of the revenue above could potentially be replaced by one payment, but having ONE company agree on what you are allowed to view and on what device, for how much, makes this step far simpler and that is perhaps the thing that Amazon has learned and will bring into play.
There should be no technical reason why devices should not be registered with multiple content networks, such as on Keychest and DECE and Amazon Cloud.
But it is likely that this will suddenly appear to become a technical impossibility, though only because of what’s at stake and of how the various players will perceive their market power.
In a logical world DRM would protect content, not stop consumers getting at the version they want, and other content eco-systems, such as the one forming around Microsoft and Nokia right now, would be just as welcome into a right locker world and this could be achieved by communication or clearing between rights lockers. But that is never going to happen ‘ who lets consumer design what they want? This is about commercial interests.
The other player which has no interest in UltraViolet is Google and of course it must copy this move in a manner of its choosing, probably the same as Apple which is to ignore all this activity and focus on the quality of its own content delivery mechanisms and markets for its own Android and Chrome devices. Will it block Android from Amazon? No we don’t think so. So the choice between the two will come down to preference and ease of use.
Now Google owns DRM specialist Widevine, Google could encrypt content and refuse to work with all of the players above, although we don’t see it as didactic as Apple and reckon it will only use Widevine to support Google TV initiatives.
“We’re excited to take this leap forward in the digital experience,” said Bill Carr, vice president of Movies and Music at Amazon. “The launch of Cloud Drive, Cloud Player for Web and Cloud Player for Android eliminates the need for constant software updates as well as the use of thumb drives and cables to move and manage music.”
“Our customers have told us they don’t want to download music to their work computers or phones because they find it hard to move music around to different devices,” Carr said. “Now, whether at work, home, or on the go, customers can buy music from Amazon MP3, store it in the cloud and play it anywhere.”
Additional storage plans start at $20 a year and Amazon will let you using any type of video file, any type of photo file and MP3and AAC for music files. That’s fine for commercial music which is now largely DRM free, but not for commercial video files, which have to be DRM, or at least stream protected.