DIGITAL DELIVERY RAISES CONSUMER MISUSE QUESTIONS FOR CABLE
ANAHEIM -- Now that cable operators are supplying content digitally, industry must address issues of consumer misuse, speakers said in roundtable discussion at Western Cable Show here last week. Analyst Ed Willner said oft- repeated conflict in digital transmission was “that many MSOs contend that the moment the content has been stored, they can do with it as they please, the networks and studios be damned. So there’s a major controversy in when do the rights to transfer over.”
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Brian Queen of IBM said his company was “building a new security architecture where we would put cryptofunctions in a chip in the CD-ROM and would operate below the operating system in a protected execution mode so that we could have more secure PC platforms.” Consensus solution for personal video recorders (PVR) was to have cable companies take over technology and install it in their set-top boxes as way to control use of technology.
Webcasters’ stance on digital rights is analogous to MSOs who believe they have right to control digital rights management, consultant Lisa Crane said. IBM’s Queen said both sides had to give: “There has got to be a middle ground. There has got to be an appreciation for the role that other players in the food chain for entertainment media play today and will play in the future, rather than the assumption that the new world is just content owner and consumer. There is an assumption by some that just because one can distribute directly to the consumer that one should; that it is all about just physically getting access to that content without consideration for merchandising, marketing, promotion -- all of that other stuff that will need to happen to sell digital media as it does to sell physical media today.”
As for consumers’ desire for online access to music, speakers said recording industry should offer subscription flat-rate service, concentrating on ease of use rather than shutting out all potential abusers. “You cannot focus on the fringe element,” Queen said: “There is always going to be that fringe element, those hackers that enjoy the process of getting around legitimate mechanisms. You have to focus on the 90% and offer them a compelling value, put together with appropriate protection mechanisms, such that it’s so easy for them to consume and pursue the content legitimately they won’t want to go elsewhere.”