No "Trust" for Microsoft

Thanks to Wickedkitten for posting in BPN

Imagine you had a nickel for every compact disc that's ever been made. The patent holders of the CD technology do have nearly all those nickels. Sony Corp. of America and Royal Philips Electronics get 3 cents for every CD manufactured, plus 3% of the price of every CD player sold.

That's a pretty good revenue stream several hundred million dollars annually as is the one that flows to the ten companies that hold the key patents on the DVD. Even the subversive, intangible MP3 that symbol of piracy triumphant generates money for its patent holders; Thomson Multimedia and the Fraunhofer Institute of Erlangen, Germany, split 75 cents per MP3 player and $3.50 to $5.00 per ripping device.

Now there's a new set of technologies whose royalty stream may eventually swamp those of all its forebears: the so-called trusted systems and digital rights management (DRM) technologies that enable secure transmission of valuable files audio, video, or text across digital networks. Thanks to Napster and its ilk, the recording industry and Hollywood have endured a crash course in the importance of DRM. But DRM's potential applications extend far beyond consumer media. Such technologies may eventually be crucial, for instance, to the financial services industry, the health-care sector, law firms, and come to think of it, any company that wants to be able to send proprietary or confidential information over digital networks without worrying that it will wind up posted on YourCompanySucks.com.

View: Full Story - Can Victor Shear Bring down Microsoft?