Continuing the consideration of the significance of MovieBeam, Adam Thierer, who moonlights putting together high tech entertainment systems, notes:

The copyleft is always saying "the content industry needs to find new business models."

Well, MovieBeam is an excellent example of how content companies ARE deploying innovative business models in response to piracy problems.

Disney was the lead developer of this technology and has made sure it is a secure end-to-end connection. In particular, you find this in the fineprint of the website: “To watch High Definition (HD) movies, you need a high-definition television (HDTV) with an HDMI [High Definition Multimedia Interface] connection.”

That is crucial. Once you move people over to systems like this—and next generation high-def DVDs as well—you can PERFECTLY control the flow and use of content over the end-pipe. HDMI allows the content distributors to confirm a “digital handshake” with other devices in the user’s home and confirm that each device in the chain is HDCP-compliant (High-Definition Content Protection).

[NOTE from Wikipedia: "High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a specification developed by the Intel Corporation to control digital audio and video content as it travels across Digital Visual Interface (DVI) or High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) connections. The HDCP specification is proprietary and an implementation of HDCP requires a license. It is a form of digital rights management (DRM).]

Does this solve their analog hole problem? Of course not. But as they give people the incentive to migrate to more next-generation HD content such as this, their old analog device problems go away naturally. And then, in the new environment, they have near-perfect control over the content flow and copying capabilities

posted by James DeLong @ 11:19 AM | Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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