SDMI-Internet Players To Miss Holiday Season

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

September 23, 1999 (3:18 PM EDT)

SDMI-Internet Players To Miss Holiday Season

After months of effort by more than 120 companies in the music, computer, online, and consumer-electronics industries, persistent technology and political disputes within the Secure Digital Music Initiative pose a serious roadblock to the holiday-season launch of SDMI-compliant Internet music players and services.

The cross-industry forum promised earlier this year to finish its work in time for inclusion in products for the Christmas shopping season, and that promise served as a drawing card for getting scores of semiconductor, software and system companies on board. Many of these vendors have staked their business plans on SDMI delivering on its vow.

Just before attending an SDMI meeting in Brooklyn this week, one SDMI member said, "The December deadline was silly. Wenever should have said it."

At issue are two tall hurdles: "licenses for screening technologies, and an SDMI trademark and compliance agreement," said Jim Burger, a partner for Dow, Lohnes & Albertson, representing the computer and online industries at SDMI. "Neither of them is necessarily impossible [to get done], and yet it is difficult to come up with answers that can be satisfied by many interested parties involved."

Although the group did produce a first version of a portable-device specification, many SDMI members this week were still scrambling to figure out exactly what screen technologies have been agreed upon and from whom they should license the SDMI spec.

In a message posted on the SDMI's e-mail reflector, obtained by EE Times, Geoffrey Anderson, vice president of Sony Electronics, wrote, "Despite the months of hard work by the SDMI participants, SDMI portable-device manufacturers and SDMI service providers are still unable to prepare for this holiday season because there neither is a consensus as to the Phase 1 screen technical structure -- whether the watermark is for 1 bit or 3 bits -- nor has complete information relating to the license for the screening technology been made available, other than in the draft license from Aris." Aris Technologies, in Cambridge, Mass., is a provider of the digital-watermarking technology selected for use by SDMI.

An even bigger problem, particularly for members of the computer industry, is the SDMI Trademark License and Compliance Agreement. Observers called this one a potential deal killer.

The sticking point is that such an agreement could hold computer companies responsible for building a general-purpose computing machine that could be used to circumvent copy protection, scrambling and encryption systems implemented by music companies. "If you are a computer company, you cannot put yourself in such an untenable position," Burger said.

One SDMI member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, "If no [compliance] agreement can be signed generally, the whole thing could crash and burn."

Portable-device manufacturers could in theory go ahead and launch Internet music players this Christmas, but they will not be able to slap an SDMI logo onto their devices if they cannot reach a consensus on the Trademark License and Compliance Agreement.

More important, without agreements on compliance issues and screening technology, there will be no computers capable of downloading SDMI-protected files from the Internet. That will mean no SDMI-compliant services, and hence no SDMI-protected files for portable devices to play back.

Screening Technology
SDMI has specified screen technology in two phases to speed time-to-market for SDMI-compliant components, with an understanding that such components will be voluntarily upgraded in the future to use copy protection technologies in the Phase 2 screen. The spec said, "the Phase 1 screen is only capable of detecting the 'upgrade to Phase 2 trigger." Meanwhile, the Phase 2 screen is understood to be a more comprehensive solution. It will be set forth in later specifications.

The controversy lies in the use of copy-control information, or CCI -- a "no copies allowed" sign embedded in content. SDMI members are split over whether and how the Phase 1 screen should deal with CCI.

Ron Moore, a Diamond Multimedia executive, posted a message earlier this month in the SDMI e-mail reflector saying, "I thought the Phase 2 system was supposed to address these [CCI bits] issues, not the Phase 1 trigger. Adding this complexity drags out availability of SDMI-compliant version 1 portable devices."

The portable-device spec does, however, say "it is expected that [Phase 1] screening technology will also be capable of detecting embedded Usage Rules information in Content."

In other words, if "no more copies" bits are set in content recorded on, for example, DVD-Audio, that information must be recognized both in Phase 1 and Phase 2, according to several SDMI sources.

As many SDMI members see it, that means the Phase 1 screen technology will require a 3-bit system, under which one bit would simply trigger rules for upgrade to Phase 2, while two extra bits detect copy-control bits.

It appears that the copy-control issues originally discussed in hashing out the DVD-Audio spec eventually came back to haunt SDMI members as well. CCI is one important element of watermark technology, a scheme the DVD-Audio group demanded. CCI alone is not cryptographically secure, but is robust enough to survive, for example, MP3 compression.

"Lots of folks did not realize that additional language was added to the SDMI spec to force compliance with such things as DVD-Audio, since most folks do not manufacture DVD devices in SDMI," said an industry source closely working with SDMI.

Complicating the 1-bit/3-bit debate further is the licensing issue. Aris, named in August as a source of SDMI watermarking technology, earlier this week made available its draft license, which covers only the 1-bit trigger technology specified in the SDMI spec. Meanwhile, the screen technology for two bits to detect CCI in content was promised as a separate license by IBM, Intel, Matsushita, and Toshiba. This ad hoc group of companies -- known within SDMI as "the 4Cs" -- took the lead role in choosing its digital-watermarking technology. They selected their own encryption and watermarking systems for DVD-Audio in close partnership with the market's five major record labels.

Shortly before the New York meeting, no draft license agreement for a 3-bit version of the Aris technology was on the table. It is unclear why the 4Cs and Aris have been unable to work out a combined license agreement. Aris Technologies president David Leibowitz had not returned a call by press time.

Many SDMI members are not only frustrated with the prospect of dealing with two separate licenses for the Phase 1 screen technology, but are also deeply concerned that finalization of the 4C/Aris license issues might further delay the entire process.

Sony's Anderson said in his e-mail message to SDMI, "If SDMI participants are not able to reach a substantial consensus as to the use of CCI at the New York meeting, to ensure that implementers are able to develop their products on a timely basis, the SDMI Plenary should decide that the Phase 1 Screen need only detect the 1-bit trigger. This result will be preferable to having the discussion drag on until the Kyoto meeting [next month], or even later. In this case, SDMI would determine to leave the issues relating to the CCI bits to the Phase 2 discussion." SDMI members are scheduled to meet in Kyoto, Japan, Oct. 19-21.

Separately, some sources speculated that several consumer electronics manufacturers are now feeling edgy about the competitive advantage that two of the 4Cs -- Matsushita and Toshiba -- may enjoy as the only CE vendors with access to the Aris technology.

While some SDMI members dread the complexity of adding CCI to a Phase 1 screen, one informed source working within SDMI noted that this was part of a compromise reached with the music industry in London in May. According to this source, under the agreement, the record companies "would drop their insistence that our devices stop accepting content other than SDMI-compliant compressed content." In return, the client platform would screen content: in Phase 1 for the upgrade trigger and embedded usage rules such as DVD-Audio; and in Phase 2 for content that has been compressed when there is information present indicating it should not have been.

Sources suggested the screen technology issues might shake out soon, but many remained skeptical about how the industries can settle on the trademark and compliance agreement. The computer industry had to deal with a similar issue in the course of developing the DVD-video standard. But the situation now is vastly different, said one computer industry source.

With DVD-Video, there already was an agreed-upon content scrambling system set by the DVD Forum. The SDMI spec, however, details no specific encryption system, nor any established scrambling and copy protection systems for record companies to use. With record companies free to choose whatever copy protection system they like, it is almost impossible for the computer-industry to sign a compliance agreement, the source added.

At this point, more and more people are beginning to predict a proliferation of non-SDMI-compliant devices and services. Asked about SDMI last month, musician and music software entrepreneur Thomas Dolby Robertson said he doesn't necessarily buy into everything the group does. "I think it was vital for the music industry to put SDMI together, and I believe we will eventually see the playing field level out," Dolby Robertson said. "However, at the same time, I think we'll see a host of devices out on the market that aren't SDMI compliant."

With additional reporting by Margaret Quan