GSMA Threatens Review of DRM Standards

GSM AssociationThe squeaky wheel gets the grease…the story so far: The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) sets standards for digital rights management (DRM) on mobile phones, prompting the owners of the patents needed to comply with the standards to pool all their patents together and form MPEG LA to charge license fees. In response, telcos and content providers argued that the fees set by the OMA were too expensive, prompting OMA to point out that they don’t actually set the fees. Now the GSM Association has indicated they’ve lost faith in the standard and are shopping around for a new one.

“Based on frank responses from operators throughout the world, our Board understands that members are being ‘forced away’ from the OMA DRM standards by this unworkable licensing scheme,” said Craig Ehrlich, Chairman of the GSM Association.

“In order to provide the services and content which their customers desire, operators will have no option but to take their own routes toward implementing proprietary DRM solutions. These solutions may have lower licensing costs, but will ultimately introduce problems for customers when roaming, changing networks or exchanging content with other users.”

Consequently the GSMA Board has instigated an immediate review of all credible alternative DRM solutions and their license conditions on the market today, so that a recommendation can be made to the Board and the membership as to those solutions that best meet the needs of the market, industry and consumers.

However, Rist Brouwer, chief executive of DMDSecure, a digital rights management software company based in Amsterdam, said the statement should be taken with a grain of salt, as “any digital rights management technology would have to rely on the same essential patents owned by the same group of companies.” The best thing for all concerned would be for MPEG LA to come back with a revised proposal, preferably one that resulted in license fees lower than the actual market.

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