DRM challenges continue to plague entertainment industry

SANTA MONICA, Calif.-Like a train caught in a labyrinth of tracks, each with unknown destinations, the entertainment industry is hurtling across the DRM space with no clear direction or destination.
So was the theme of this morning’s panel at the Digital Hollywood conference on copyrights and the challenge rights-holders face in protecting their work across multiple platforms.
“DRM has not done anything to stop piracy-period,” said Jay Samit, a longtime executive in the music industry and now a strategic advisor at Navio, a company that enables digital entertainment transactions. “For most of the world, if you go into a store to buy a CD, you’re buying a pirated CD.”
Jim Cicconi, senior VP of external and legislative affairs at AT&T Inc., said DRM is the only tool available on a large scale that currently addresses copyright-protection issues.
“I think DRM is driven largely by the dilemma these (copyright-holding) companies face,” he said.
“I think DRM is a challenge going forward and you’re going to find a lot of experimentation across these platforms,” Cicconi said. “Nobody is hostile per se to fair use, and I think the cross-platform challenge is going to tee this up with a vengeance.”
Perhaps concluding it best was Sid Blum, partner at KPMG, a company that represents rights holders. While most everyone agrees that big changes are inevitably coming, few claim to have the answers.
“There needs to be a revolutionary change,” he said, before adding, “I don’t know what that’s going to be.”