Once To A Greater Extent Than Into The Pool, Love Friends

ZDNet United Kingdom of Great Britain together with Northern Ireland reports that InterTrust, ContentGuard, Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial together with Philips Electronics have, "grouped together essential anti-piracy patents for a criterion prepare yesteryear the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), an organisation of handset makers together with mobile telecom operators", according to MPEG LA, which has a suitcase on simply most all the essential patents for MPEG-2. This way that independent mobile weep upwardly makers volition convey to pay a dollar to seat the OMA's Digital Rights Management (DRM) 1.0 criterion into a mobile phone, spell content owners who desire to role the OMA DRM volition pay royalties representing 1% of the consumer selling cost of their service, says the report. According to ZDNet:

"The pooling should besides brand clear that everyone who uses OMA's DRM needs to pay royalties. ContentGuard said inwards Oct that OMA had non informed its members properly together with that many handset makers idea the anti-piracy criterion was free".

ContentGuard is at nowadays to a greater extent than or less owned yesteryear Time Warner together with Microsoft, who lately teamed upwardly to purchase most of Xerox Corp's interests inwards the company. Under their articulation ownership, says the European Commission: “ContentGuard may convey both the incentives together with the might to role its IPR portfolio to seat Microsoft's rivals inwards the DRM solutions marketplace at a competitive disadvantage". The Commission has all the same halted an antitrust investigation into the company. Says ZDNet:

"The mobile weep upwardly manufacture is the outset marketplace where all players convey agreed to role a unmarried DRM criterion for command of digital content, inwards stark contrast amongst the media services available to Internet users on personal computers. These services, such equally Apple's iTunes, Sony's Connect together with Microsoft's MSN Music Club, all convey their ain proprietary systems to protect songs, despite the fact that they convey been built amongst much of the same technology".

However, amusement manufacture DRM applications are cracked equally shortly equally they're developed, acting equally piddling to a greater extent than than challenges to the members of the many together with diverse hacker fraternities. According to Andrew Orlowski, writing inwards The Register,

"Agreement has been rapid, taking less than iv months. But it's nevertheless a considerable burden to cost-sensitive manufacturers, which ofttimes balk at paying to a greater extent than than a few cents for essential software. Handset vendors solely pay simply about $5 to license the air interface. The costs volition indirectly live on born yesteryear the consumers, who equally ever inwards a lock-down regime, destination upwardly paying to a greater extent than for less".

Underwater phones: simply the affair for pooled telecoms technology

's comments on patent pooling inwards the telecoms sector are well-known. There mostly look to live on excuses for it that escape the investigation together with censure of the European Commission. Oh for a genuine way of establishing open-to-all industry-wide technical standards that tin live on used at a reasonable price.

ETSI together with European telecoms standards here
Phones for pools here and here