Apple Isn't only One Missing from DECE Consortium

(MoneyWatch)  A group in the digital entertainment industry is creating yet another standards body to develop digital rights management that won't repel consumers. Many have pointed to Apple's visible absence, but the missing, and problems, go far deeper.

The consortium is called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE). Its members have been working since May to create rules that will let consumers share their purchased content on a number of devices in the home, or stream them over the Internet to laptops, cell phones, or other electronic gear. "No matter where you are in the world, if you previously purchased Spider-Man 3, you should be able to access Spider-Man and stream it," Mitch Singer, the group's president, said in an interview.

Most industry analysts have focused on the list of participants, which includes:

• Philips
• Toshiba
• HP
• Cisco
• Microsoft
• Warner Brothers
• Fox Entertainment
• Lions Gate
• Sony
• Paramount
• Comcast
• Best Buy
• Verisign
• Intel

The group says it wants to set standards to let people burn an unlimited number of copies of a video to disc, permit remote storage and streaming, make devices and services interoperable, and create open standards to support all this.

Falling sales rates of traditional meida indicate that the industry must find a way to let people use the media they've bought when and where they want. But this isn't news. Companies have tried before to create a standard for interoperability, as BusinessWeek notes:

Microsoft established its PlaysForSure rights scheme for digital music players as an alternative to the iPod ecosystem from Apple. But Microsoft's attempt fizzled in 2007 after the software giant created its own Zune music players, which did not adhere to the standard. And consortia such as the Digital Living Network Alliance and Coral have been trying for years to create a framework of minimum technical specifications for devices in the home. Even Intel, which is joining the new group, flopped with its Viiv brand to get manufacturers and content providers to adhere to a specific set of guidelines.

Why didn't any of these earlier approaches work? They never got a broad enough consortium to buy in. What has struck many is one name that doesn't appear in the membership list: Apple. There is no way to make a standard stick in the entertainment world if you don't include Apple. Of course the company wouldn't want part of this, because it would have to open up iTunes and the iPod to work with competing products and services, and Apple certainly does not want to give up its position in the content food chain.

But that is hardly the only noticeable omission. What about Nintendo, which only makes the top two game consoles in the world? You can't talk about entertainment without including gaming, particularly when there's been long-term speculation that the game console could become the natural entertainment center of the home. NetFlix or Amazon or Blockbuster, all three of which are major forces in media distribution? Not members.

If what you want requires knowing who has purchased legal copies of media, then you must get the resellers to give up that data, and you hae to acknowedge the leaders in all the relevant types of content. Maybe the founding members think that if they control content and hardware, distribution channels will have to follow. But that isn't a smart bet, particularly if you want consumers to be able to stream media they already own. In an age of digital distribution, the industry will find that it can't get anywhere until it makes arrangements worth the time of consumers and the places they do business.

Copier image via Morguefile.com user dave, use by site standard license.