Is DECE the future of digital movie distribution?
Agreement on an open file format spec and the addition of 21 new member companies—including Adobe–are just a couple of the details of the announcement made by the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) group at CES2010.
DECE, formed in late 2008 as a counter to Apple’s seeming stranglehold on digital content distribution, plans to develop an integrated DRM scheme that member companies will honor. DECE membership includes Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast, Fox, HP, Intel, Lions Gate, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Paramount Pictures, Philips, Sony and Warner Bros.
Besides making sure Apple doesn’t walk away with the pie, the group’s main concern is to answer consumer (and producer) grumblings about proliferating formats that hinder, for example, someone who buys a movie online from copying it to another device the user owns.
The Walt Disney Co., which is developing its own DRM spec, Keychest, also made a CES2010 announcement on its planned rollout of the technology later this year . As Steve Jobs sits on Disney’s board, you can image that Apple will be signing on to that spec soon. A Reuters report says that Disney officials hope to use KeyChest to “build momentum for the long-stalled digital distribution of films.”
