DcedigitalConsumerEnablement
Latest
HBO's Bob Zitter wants to call DRM "Digital Consumer Enablement"
As if DRM's current "Digital Rights Management" title wasn't enough of a euphemism, Bob Zitter, CTO of HBO (owned by Time Warner, parent company of AOL, which owns Engadget) wants to rename it "Digital Consumer Enablement" to reflect all the exciting things it "allows" consumers to do. Zitter argues that DCE sets up consumers "to use content in ways they haven't before," such as portable media playback. (Funny, we don't remember the entertainment industry helping us out much with that one.) "I don't want to use the term DRM any longer," he says. He noted that HBO has been holding back HD on Demand movies thanks to that pesky analog hole that the FCC requires for older displays, and it's quite clear that the irony of the situation is lost on him -- DRM isn't doing a whole lot of enabling right there. Rather than trusting customers, Zitter would rather change the name of the tech to make them feel better about jumping through hoops to appease the media gods. To his credit, Zitter is a proponent of burn-to-own DVDs and "early window exhibition" releases of HD movies, but it he'll have to do a little better than "DCE" to prove himself an enabler of the consumer.[Via Slashdot]
