Coral signals a new era for DRM

A consortium of technology companies hopes to create a common antipiracy language, ending the Babel of copy-proofing technologies that has rendered much digital content and hardware incompatible.

The Coral Consortium, which will be announced on Monday, will initially draw on support from giants including Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial and Twentieth Century Fox, along with digital rights management (DRM) company InterTrust Technologies.

The problem the group is tackling is the one familiar to anyone who owns Apple Computer-made iPod music player and has found themselves unable to play music purchased from an online music store operated by Napster, Microsoft or other Apple rivals. DRM software that protects content such as music, movies or video games is proprietary, and many different companies now produce incompatible varieties.

Participants say Coral will be aimed at creating a set of technology specifications that will let different kinds of copy-protection be translated into other varieties.

"This is a problem that has gotten worse as more people have deployed DRM, not better," said Talal Shamoon, chief executive officer of InterTrust, which was purchased by a consortium including Sony and Philips in 2002. "The goal here is to try to figure out a way how to network DRM systems together, and let people build their own DRMs."

The question of interoperability among different companies' anti-piracy technologies has become increasingly important -- and sometimes bitter -- in the past year.

While multiple, incompatible flavours of rights-management technology have existed for years, the release of Apple’s iTunes music store and the stellar sales of its iPod MP3 player finally put the question on the front burner. Many companies, including Microsoft, rushed to create their own version of a downloadable music store online. But because Apple has declined to license its own "FairPlay" rights-management technology to anyone, no rival is officially able to sell songs that play on the iPod.

RealNetworks has been a lone exception, creating its own version of Apple’s technology without permission and advertising itself as the only non-Apple iPod-compatible digital download store. Apple has protested vigorously, even threatening legal action, however.

Content owners, including record labels and movie studios, have been pushing hard behind the scenes for interoperability. They like the idea of industry-wide standards such as the DVD or CD, which allow one product to be played on hardware produced by any manufacturer.

Other groups have pushed for interoperability as well. A project headed by Moving Pictures Experts Group Leonardo Chiariglione has been working since last summer to find an interoperability standard.

Neither group includes Apple or Microsoft, the two most prominent makers of copy-protection technology for consumers, however.