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++ New Extent of Copyright Control ++
ICT-equipment and software producers are teaming up
with the media and entertainment industry to enforce
the protection of copyright in the digital space. The
intellectual property behind the new technology CPRM
(Content Protection for Recordable Media) is owned by
the 4C Entity, which comprises Intel, IBM, Matsushita
and Toshiba. CPRM is designed for controlling the copying,
moving and deletion of digital media on a host device,
such as a personal computer, or other digital players.
It is already used in specific removable media such as
DVD, but has now been proposed for inclusion in the ATA
specification for hard drives. Further information on the
subject is available at the web-site of NCTIS (National
Committee for Information Technology Standards)T.13
technical committee:  http://www.t13.org.
According to IBM the new tool for copyright protection
will be in every industry-standard hard disk by next
summer. Each CPRM-compatible ATA hard drive will then
be individually signed, and authenticate the playback
and movement of files on the device against a central
server using CPRM-compliant software. The main beneficiaries
of the introduction of CPRM will be the big entertainment
and media corporations while end users and authors are very
likely to be on the downward slope. Significant costs will
arise for consumers as the proposed mechanism introduces
problems to moving data between compliant and non-compliant
devices and moreover considerably restricts the possibility
of copying - also for private use, which is generally exempt
under the doctrine of fair use. And all the royalty creators
will receive is a tiny proportion of the fee charged by
the distributor to the end user.
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DIGITAL ECOLOGY