Lasse Penttinen
20 Jan 2003 10:03
It's all about digital rights these days. Microsoft aims to add one more dominant market position to it's portfolio?
Microsoft has moved itself a little closer to its goal of becoming the entertainment industry's vendor of choice for Digital Rights Management. Today it announced the release of the Windows Media 9 Data Session Toolkit, together with key customers for the technology.
These include CD manufacturer MPO, which supplies several major music companies, Universal Music Group and EMI.
The point of the Data Session Toolkit is that (as its name suggests) you use it to create a second, data, session on CDs and DVDs. This is a protected Windows Media Audio session which can be used to control playback rights, and which can also be used to provide second session-only material, e.g. (as Microsoft sweetly suggests) "support for 5.1-channel surround sound through a PC running the Windows(r) XP operating system."
MPO general manager Philippe Thorel says the company intends to use the Toolkit alongside "our own Private Audio (tm) copy management system, to combine content protection with automatic control of consumer requests for private copying. We can now offer our record label customers the ability to deliver high-quality audio for PC playback as well as the opportunity to collect new revenue from consumers who wish to make additional secure copies of their music."
The Register has not as yet managed to nail down a spec for "Private Audio (tm)", so we're unable to confirm that this really is the despicable money-making wheeze it sounds like. But feel free to worry.
The Register