More than 4 years since its inception the Digital Living Network Alliance is ready to take on Digital Rights Management and is expected to endorse the Coral Group’s interoperable DRM standards.
The EE Times this week cited DLNA chairman Scott Smyers saying it was about to release a request for proposals for digital rights management interoperability, seeking an open standard to make various DRM products work together. No timescale for the proposal was alluded to by Smyers.
We argued with Smyers four years ago, saying that the main plank missing from all of its endorsements was DRM and that without addressing that its entire effort was worthless.
The DLNA was formed by 17 of the most powerful technology and consumer electronics businesses in the world joined together to agree which standards they would back to create the digital home.
Originally it was called the Digital Home Working Group until its founders agreed to add Nokia and Texas Instruments, who pointed out that by including handsets it was really about digital living, not the home.
In March this year the founder members, which are those allowed to vote, rose to 25 with the addition of AMD, Broadcom, Comcast New Media Development, DigiOn, Dolby Laboratories, LG Electronics and NXP Semiconductors, joining the original Huawei, HP, Intel, IBM, Kenwood, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Toshiba. These join 230 further member companies that back the standards and help carry out the plug fest work.
We have said all along that the DLNA had the power to really accelerate the arrival of the digital home, but its one sticking point was its failure to endorse a single DRM standard. Now it can avoid that by endorsing the DMR interoperability layer specified by Coral, and encouraging members to make their DRM systems open to Coral.
This will make it relatively simple for one operator or group of operators which want to allow content controlled by their different DRM systems, to interoperate. Operators that do not want their content to move freely are not forced to do so just by including the technology.
The DLNA were always going to leave DRM until last and president Smyers originally told us, ‘We are aware of the DRM issue and we are looking at a few thing, but it will take time.’
A DLNA working group on digital rights aims to endorse a mechanism that would allow content purchased on one device to be securely played back on another system, operator permitting.
Coral’s approach could be used even if Microsoft makes no changes to its popular Windows Media DRM because the interoperability is defined at a layer above the DRM. Apple, because it is the operator of iTunes, would have to make changes to iTunes to allow interoperability.