THE STUMBLING BLOCK PREVENTING WIDESPREAD DEPLOYMENT OF DVD

The drive to establish the digital versatile disk product is intense because of the market potential involved. According to Philips Electronics NV of Eindhoven, There are 600 million CD audio and CD ROM drives installed worldwide.

In addition, 10 billion compact discs have been stamped to play on these units. With each user a potential buyer of digital versatile disk players and discs, the market is huge and untapped. But, there is one major obstacle blocking this gold rush from happening: how can copyright owners protect their content published on DVD.

The current stalemate began in late March, with Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA).

They are submitting to the U.S. Congress proposed legislation mandating digital versatile disk players include a copy protection scheme in their equipment with the recommendation, for copy protection.

One reason for the extra caution is that DVD will connect to computers that have the ability to copy and reproduce the content on other storage media or transmit over networks. Audio compact discs are already living with this reality, but the fact seems lost on the MPAA and CEMA.

“ The proposal specifies a technical reference document, which sets forth the specific standards and specifications for encoding linear motion pictures with copy control information,” Philip V.W. Dodds, president of the Interactive Multimedia Association explains. “All linear movie player devices, which are defined in the proposed bill, are mandated to conform with this specification.”

The measure enables content owners to limit reproduction of pay-per-view, video-on-demand, pay broadcast, or pre-recorded material. However, television and cable broadcasters are exempted. “The draft bill is clearly aimed at protecting the period immediately following the initial release of movies, or those products that have not yet been released to television,” Dodds contends.

Needless to say, the computer industry is balking at the prospect of this proposed legislation becoming law. After reviewing the draft proposal, the ad-hoc Technical Working Group composed of eleven major computer manufacturers came to the following conclusion: “the TWG representatives have unanimously concluded that the current proposal is not acceptable.”

Dodds says that the TWG cited the computer’s inability to track source/destination information of data during its transfer; performance degradation; non-standard data block size; unnecessary complexity to system design; inability to access the vertical blanking interval (for analog sources); requirement to support the standard even if no DVD device were attached to the PC; and the requirement that all data streams would have to be continually monitored for the possible inclusion of copy protection information.

Dodds concludes it is infeasible for the computer industry to comply with the proposal, even if manufacturers wanted.

The AP-Dow Jones News Services for July 3, 1996, cited other stumbling blocks to the DVD included fees for companies that invented the discs and a method of coding the CDs so manufacturers can control which discs can be played on machines sold in specific regions of the world.

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