* You need DAM
* Worry about DRM
Acronyms make this industry spin but why would you want a DAM and isn't DRM a
good thing?
DAM is really digital asset management. And contrary to what you might think
at first blush it isn't what someone is trying to sell you, it's your assets.
As you'll see shortly and contrary to what your bank statement shows your assets
are out of control.
DRM is digital rights management. Boy that sounds like a good thing…like the
Bill of Rights. Wrong! It means the person who sent you that content - music,
TV, movie, whatever - wants to own that sucker forever and is working real hard
to make certain you pay for it…forever!
Your Assets
So what are all of your digital assets?
* More than 22.3 million digital cameras were shipped in the U.S.
in 2004 and that was up from 16.4 million last year. Expect the numbers to be
even bigger this year because we're getting to really like the instant capture-instant
look (figure 1). Many of these now combine still and video capabilities.
* The U.S. has finally gotten the camera phone bug which Asia (and
Europe) has had for years. In Japan for the past two years if a cellphone didn't
include a camera it didn't sell. Last year the same held true in Europe. InfoTrends/CAP
Ventures says that the introduction of megapixel handsets will set off a tsunami
of camphones this year.
* All of these cameras and camcorders are being used. Camphones
have reached the point where there are a number of bans on their use in some
offices and public places. Last year we took more than 1.75 billion still images
worldwide (figure 2) and more than 40,000 hours of video per month.
* Audio content? There's no accurate count that we know of. But
to hear the RIAA, millions of digital songs are being stored every day. Let's
use the CEA's numbers for MP3 units as a start - about 7 million last year and
about 11 million this year. Assume half of the music is also stored on the PC
and uploaded to the player and "they" download (legally or illegally) a song
a day.
* Then you timeshift two TV shows a week to watch when you want
to watch them rather than when the networks tell you you want to watch them.
And you save one of those shows because you want to collect the entire series.
Is it any wonder that it feels as though you have to clean your hard drive or
constantly buy a bigger and bigger external drive every 4-5 months? And of course
you consistently and faithfully back these irreplaceable files up with products
like NTI's BackupNOW! to CDs and DVDs.
Only 13% of the digital photos are ever printed which means millions of files
sit on hard drives just waiting to go poof! and disappear forever. People won't
back up things like tax records and business files they have on their notebooks
and home systems but we really believe digital photos and family videos may get
all of us to do more backup. Photos/videos of births, birthdays, holidays, weddings,
divorces are just too important to lose!!
The CEA has surveyed consumers and we have told them resoundingly that we want
the product (figure 3). So they do what they do best. They offer 200 and 400
disc CD carousels. They offer 3-5 disc DVD players. They offer terabyte external
drives and media servers (figure 4) that are presently known as PCs.
The big problem is managing all of that content and using it…that's digital asset
management. There are DAM products but those we are most familiar with cost
big bucks for enterprise data/document management. Great if you are Steve Jobs
or Bill Gates and have a wall of HD units or a big optical library that grabs
the content, plays it and returns it so it can be accessed later.
What is really needed (even before the hardware) is software that automatically
recognizes music, photos, videos, DVDs, TV programs and produces meta data. This
data would then track the content's "name," where the data is located and how
it can be accessed for local or remote enjoyment anywhere in the house. Don't
know about you but software that would do that in our household would be worth
$50-$100…easy.
Then we'd actually be able to find the one content piece we want that sits in
our wireless HD MediaServer (Figure 5) and do what the DLNA (digital living network
alliance) tells us we are going to be able to do…play it anywhere in the house.
Of course we would also like to have a mini optical library that connects to
the PC (which isn't in the living room or den) that has a DVD burner in it and
slots for 200-400 CDs or DVDs. We've seen one of these when we visited Sony
once but content indexing is manual. But we only saw it once and never in a
store? We've also seen a unit that we think could work for the home from PowerFile.
Add the automated library software and BAM! we think we'd have a winner on
our hands.
Sales in this category are almost nowhere right (figure 6) now. But in a few
years believe CDEIA and home network/entertainment VARs could sell a bunch.
Then the mass merchants would "discover" the potential and everyone would have
them. Maybe someone will have these units at CES in 2010 (we can only hope).
Their Assets
Remember all of those music, TV and video/movie content files we mentioned earlier?
Guess what? Hollywood, the record industry and TV networks believe your only
right is to rent them…not buy them (with hard money or by watching shows between
mind-numbing commercials).
RIAA is so determined to protect "its" property it has sued a 7-year-old whose
parents barely make enough to stay off welfare. Then they took on an 80-plus
woman who had been dead for six-months. The parents (and friends) paid. Still
waiting to hear if the deceased has come across with her payment (oh did we forget
to mention she never owned a computer?).
People like Apple, RealNetworks, Virgin and Michael Robinson (original founder
of MP3 and a new firm with a similar goal) make a great living selling you music
by the slice. There is even the beginning of a price war going on so the price
per song is getting better…and better. But Napster doesn't think you want to
own your music but simply rent it for $15 a month…yeah! Of course only 5% of
the digital music devices have download technology anyway so is this lack of
market research or a good business model? Guess we'll just add Sirius to our
home entertainment system to compliment our discs.
MPAA has watched RIAA take a PR beating so they've chosen to take the professional
approach. They shut down sights that "might" enable video downloads. Then they
throw parties and make contributions in D.C. to help Congress see that they are
only trying to protect people from themselves.
To help you protect your family the MPAA has released something called Parent
File Scan tool. It lets you find all those "bad" files stashed on the kids hard
drives. Then it lets you make the "appropriate decision." Great!!
What they never bother telling Congress (nor would they probably understand)
is that even on a global basis we don't live in a broadband world (figure 7)
and broadband is necessary to stream a movie. Korea, Japan and Taiwan are so
far ahead of the Americas with broadband. In fact they are moving more of their
TV to broadband than movies (now that will shake up your cable company). Of
course products like BitTorrent that breaks files into manageable segments so
shows that would take hours to download can be transmitted in minutes. Since
20 million people have already downloaded BitTorrent. You can bet Hollywood,
networks and program developers are - a little - worried.
More importantly according to IDC downloading movies with our Internet connection
is pretty low on our wish list (figure 8). But obviously the potential is there
and Hollywood will protect us!
Congress (yes again) has already moved to save us from copying and distributing
all of those really outstanding TV shows like Apprentice, Queer Eyes for the
Straight Guy, Wife Swap, Extreme Makeover.
Guess what? Hollywood and the networks don't like your timeshifting shows!
Right now only about 6 million Americans use DVRs but one estimate shows that
by 2010 half of the American homes (58 million) will have them. Of course Asia
and European households are well ahead of the adoption curve. They want to get
you into thinking video-on-demand (yes rent but not rent-to-own).
So to again protect us, the FCC introduced the broadcast flag in 2003 which has
to be in place by mid-year on any digitally broadcast show! This little invisible
antipiracy device will make life tough for even law-abiding viewers and organizations
like EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) have filed suits saying the FCC has
overstepped it's authority…you think?
But there are ways to by-pass this (check www.eff.com).
The CEA officially endorses and aggressively walks the halls of Congress to protect
the individual's right to make a backup copy of something they have purchased.
But, individual companies are eagerly holding hands with Hollywood, networks,
content developers (video and audio) to get their part of the video content protection
royalty pie.
They have developed a slew of moneymaking copy protection acronyms to ensure
you always rent and never own (even when you buy). These include:
* CPRM - content protection for recordable media
* CSS - content scramble system
* DTCP - digital transmission content protection
* CPPM - content protection for prerecorded media
* SDMI/DMAT- secure digital music initative/digital music access
technology
* VCPS - video content protection system
* CPSA - content protection system architecture
Not to be overlooked is Macrovision's new RipGuard that is really great! It
simply crashes any ripping software and prevents you from writing the movie to
your hard drive. Now that is too cool!!!
Now we all understand that DAM is a bad word. However, DRM is all about government
around the globe protecting us from "evil."
Just remember those famous words of Walt Kelly, Pogo comic strip creator…"We
have met the enemy and he is us."
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