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October, 2001 TECH TRENDS |
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Master
File CHANNELS Politics
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DATA PLAY DISKS Who's Afraid Of Pirates? The size of a rupee coin, a disk with built-in encryption could substantially curb the rampant practice of music piracy By Akansha Atroley It's probably the end of the road for compact disks (CDs), the largest carriers of music piracy over the Net. At least that's what developers of DataPlay, a media start-up, would have us believe. The firm is offering an alternative to the ubiquitous CD-a secure digital medium in the shape of its disks, which exploits a key weakness of tapes and music CDs: You can't copy-protect them. The firm has devised disks that have built-in encryption; so a record label can decide how their music is used, how many copies can be made, and how many "generations" of those copies can be cloned from each other. DataPlay, however, is also candid in admitting that though the possibility of breaking the encryption cannot be ruled out, given that hackers treat such claims as particularly enticing challenges, the process is difficult and hence lowers the likelihood of encryption breaking. A Simple Remedy
"A standard for protected portable media is a must to create the CD's successor. A ubiquitous protected format beyond the CD can conclusively halt music piracy, while delivering an entertainment experience," adds Shamoon. Though there are no restrictions on the use of encryption technology in the US, it has not been tried by the media players as yet. Analysts are therefore sceptical if it would be endorsed by customers. But at the same time the success of the technology in other areas have a large number of PC firms and privacy advocates looking at it as a "effective" means to curb piracy. The Data Ware DataPlay-enabled devices include blank and pre-recorded disks that can hold up to 11 hours of compressed music, or seven to 10 albums. About the size of a rupee coin, they boast a 500 MB storage capacity. One can record music, images, books, games and E-mails-all on a single, blank DataPlay digital media and play it on any DataPlay-enabled device. The firm plans to cram hours worth of music and games onto their disks by compressing the information in various ways, such as filtering out very high and very low frequencies. DataPlay is promoting the write-once disks as an alternative to the flash memory cards widely used in portable devices. The firm claims the physical engine is the tiniest optical drive ever built, with an optical head that's smaller than the head of a matchstick. They have been developed for use with portable digital music players, digital cameras, Web-enabled mobile phones and PDAs. Research organisation International Data Corp.'s (IDC) Bryan Ma in a release said the disks provide more files and more hours stored on one piece of media than with a CD, which only offers one hour of music. Ma, however, believes that given the large installed base of CD players, it is unlikely that DataPlay disks would be able to phase out traditional CDs right away. And though the music industry is yet to witness a Napster-like huge consumer movement against encrypted ware, to say that a storm is silently brewing would not be an overstatement. Swapping of music files is taken for granted today, and technology that would prevent youngsters from doing so freely might not really take off in the real sense of the word, feel market analysts. His Master's Voice Still, Todd Oseth, senior vice-president at DataPlay, maintains in a company release that the disks have an edge over CDs also because of its pre-recordable and writeable features. Music fans would be able to purchase an album and record their voices as they sing along with songs on the same disks. Besides, the portability of the disks would enable people to carry them virtually anywhere they travel, compared with CDs, which are larger and less easily carried around. Oseth said while consumers will need to buy a player-which will cost anywhere between $199 (Rs 9000) and $299 (Rs 14,000)-to play the disks, the player will also run any other digital content, including videos and E-books. People can download music on the disk as well as purchase DataPlay content from retail stores. DataPlay feels it can maintain the quality of the consumers' experience with older media even though they will have migrated to an encryptable medium that protects content owners. The firm is also developing a way to integrate its format with existing Windows files, so a DataPlay disk can appear as another drive on one's PC, and one could drag and drop files between it and other types of drives. A Long, Winding Track Ahead DataPlay, however, has a hard row to hoe. Only one new consumer media format, DVD, has hit it big in the past 15 years, says a report from Forrester Research. Laser disks, digital compact cassettes, digital audio cassettes and MiniDisks have all fallen by the wayside or have become cult products, never quite breaking out into mass markets. DataPlay will be fighting against a massive CD industry. Some 56 million CD players were sold in 2000 along with 9.2 million tape decks and 1.1 million MP3 players, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. Nearly 300 million blank audio cassettes were sold last year-but that number's fast going down, with recordable CDs cutting into the figure. Going by the popularity of CDs, the music industry might not risk putting its full force behind the new disks, the promising technology notwithstanding. DataPlay may still have its work cut out to convince consumers to adopt the new format. |
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InterTrust
Technologies-a manufacturer of digital rights management (DRM) software-has
allied with DataPlay in this copy protection venture. It says it would
place DRM formats on DataPlay-enabled devices. Consumer electronics makers,
including Samsung, Toshiba and SONICblue, which are developing DataPlay-enabled
devices, will be able to license the format. Though confident that DataPlay
disks-to be rolled out this month-will eventually replace CDs, the companies
also believe that the problem of music piracy cannot be given a decent
burial until the CD is done away with altogether. "A lot of these
music subscription services and download services that have been put together...
are great, but they're not an effective replacement for a new entertainment
experience because CDs are still here, and CDs define the path,"
said Talal Shamoon, senior vice-president at InterTrust, in a company
release.
