"Preferred Media Platform"

Since I've started working on the topic of DRM, I may as well try to keep up-to-date with it.

The other day I speculated that Microsoft's DRM goal is to make equipment that runs Microsoft software the preferred or even the sole platform for delivery of DRM-enabled content. This ZDNet article by Joe Wilcox confirms that idea. (Thanks to Denise for the link.)

By providing free use of the DRM technology and the accompanying toolkit, Microsoft hopes to make Windows Media audio and video formats more popular with record labels and eventually consumers. The strategy follows marginally successful partnerships with device makers and content creators designed to further the adoption of the format.

"Microsoft hopes that filling a perceived need by the labels to create a DRM solution will help drive Windows Media forward beyond the PC and into the arena of consumer electronics." said Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg.

At the same time, Microsoft is licensing its Windows Media 9 Series file formats for use on non-Windows operating systems and on devices. Many analysts view the low-cost of the licensing as an attempt to undercut the licensing cost for MPEG-4, the successor to MPEG-2 used on Hollywood movie DVDs and the biggest potential competitive threat to Windows Media technologies.

"The long-term strategy is the ubiquity of the Windows Media Format," Rosoff said. "If that becomes the default format, suddenly they're selling a lot more Windows Servers, because you need Windows Server to administer the DRM and host and stream the files if you're doing it that way. And you need the licenses for the devices to play the files." [link]

The interviewees concede that Microsoft's real goal is probably to extend its monopoly. Notice the economic value transfers implicit in this scheme: Microsoft gives the content providers something for free, sells content providers licenses for the equipment to run it, and the technology deprives consumers of the value of (1) their choice of computer/device platform and (2) their flexibility to control what they do with the media in their possession. Microsoft, of course, cleans up, licensing DRM agents in consumer electronics and computers while selling Windows Server cash cows to media distributors. Meanwhile, competing DRM technologies will struggle to find a way to compete with Microsoft's gift of DRM technology to the distributors. Microsoft can make money from the sale of its server OS; RealNetworks can't.

Meanwhile, the article suggests that the labels are contemplating offering digital files to consumers on multisession CDs:

Providing digital tracks that can be transferred to a computer, copied to an MP3 player, and ultimately even burned onto a CD will defang critics who say copy protection eliminates consumers' flexibility to use their own music, the labels say.

The media format, of course, would be the DRM-enabled Windows Media Audio. This marketing technique could stave off some of consumers' frustration at the idea of being unable to copy audio from the computer to a portable device. That would depend on the details, and peer-to-peer filesharing would be right out. One problem is that the portable device would have to support WMA; I'd guess that PocketPCs do, but I'm not aware of any other devices that do (but I also haven't followed the market), and I'd guess that Apple's astonishingly consumer-friendly iPod does not. It probably could, but that would mean making Apple a slave to Microsoft in yet another arena of computer use.