[DMCA-Activists] IBM Prepares Home Network Lockbox

[Seth Johnson]

(Forwarded from Interesting People list.  Will they ever stop with this
nonsense?  -- Seth)


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [IP] IBM prepares lockbox for home networks
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 18:41:43 -0400
From: Dave Farber <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden

IBM prepares lockbox for home networks
By <mailto:address@hidden:IBM prepares lockbox
for home networks>Martin LaMonica
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
<http://news.com.com//2100-1017_3-5077368.html?tag=prntfr>http://news.com.com/2100-1017-5077368.html
 


IBM is readying a digital rights management strategy for securing content
everywhere from Hollywood to Wall Street.

The initiative, called extensible Content Protection (xCP), involves
software that allows media companies to put controls on content distributed
to consumers' home networks. The initiative is aimed at preventing illegal
use of commercial media. Dick Anderson, the general manger for IBM's Media
and Entertainment group, will discuss the project Thursday at a conference
to be held at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society
in Cambridge, Mass. IBM is expected to announce its first entertainment
industry xCP customer in about a month.

xCP includes encryption software that allows media providers to give
consumers the right to, for example, watch a movie on a DVD player and any
other xCP-compliant device on that consumer's home network. The software
will let media companies protect their intellectual property and be simple
enough for consumers to use, according to IBM.


Such safeguards will allow the media and entertainment industry to develop
viable business models for content distribution, which at this point are
lacking, said Steve Canepa, vice president of strategy for IBM's media and
entertainment industry.

"The ground we're trying to get to is to maybe take the focus off rights
specifications for control and limitation in what can be done with content
and to change the focus to self-enablement and a new user experience," said
Canepa.

Although <http://news.com.com//2100-1023-5072564.html?tag=nl>high-profile
battles waged by music and movie studios against illicit Internet media
downloads generate the most headlines, IBM sees a parallel need for content
protection in other industries.

An aerospace manufacturer, for example, would want to distribute engineering
plans to its partners electronically with strictly controlled access rights.
Also, regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA) dictate certain data-protection procedures for
medical patients' personal information.

However, because of inadequate digital rights management (DRM) software,
companies lose billions of dollars a year in intellectual property in the
form of stolen research or customer lists, said Stuart Sager, program
director for copy protection and DRM at IBM's software group.

"The need to protect content in the enterprise space is very real," Sager
said. "We think that DRM is really going to become very ubiquitous."

IBM will embed digital rights management (DRM) capabilities across its
software line. The company is now testing a system to add in DRM controls to
its <http://news.com.com//2100-1001-981880.html?tag=nl>DB2 Content Manager
product and is targeting a final release of the add-on product at some point
in 2004.

The DRM features will allow a company to assign access rights to content and
track its usage. Customers can tap into the DRM feature, which is written in
Java, via Web services programming protocols, but they do not have to change
the code of existing applications, Sager said.

IBM will eventually embed its DRM software, called Copy Protection and
Enabling, across its entire middleware line, including WebSphere and Tivoli
products.

Digital rights management is an important push for software giant Microsoft
as well. DRM is a key feature of its Office 2003 desktop application suite
and an important part of the company's ongoing security initiative. This
week, Microsoft revealed
<http://news.com.com//2100-1012-5071342.html?tag=nl>pricing details on its
plan for assigning authoring and viewing rights to documents for people
using Microsoft Office and Windows Server 2003.

IBM's approach to DRM is broader than Microsoft's, said Sager. IBM is
tracking standards for various content types, such as audio files, images or
video clips, and the DRM software in Content Manager will support the
various formats.

The DRM architecture also allows companies to reuse content in different
scenarios. For example, a company could sell an audio file for download both
to a mobile phone and to a home network using the xCP software.

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