Chapter 3: Mobile Personal Content Uncovered 69 CENTRALLY CONTROLLED DRM, OR: WHY DIVX FAILED In 1998, a new scheme for viewing movies was presented in the US, named Digital 12 13 Video Express (DivX). The popular DivX video codec was ironically named after this, containing initially a smiley postfi x: DivX;). The idea behind DivX was simple: the user purchased the movie on a disk as usual, at a signifi cantly lower fee com- pared to the same movie on DVD. The disk was to be viewed on a dedicated player that was equipped with a modem and hooked up to a telephone line. The fi rst time the user inserted the disk, the player downloaded codes from a remote server that unlocked the protection mechanisms present on the disk. Then, the user was able to play the disk for as many times as they wanted within the next 48 hours or, by paying extra, for a longer period of time, or by paying even more, without any restrictions; then the disk was effectively equal to a DVD. A disk was unplayable unless the centrally controlled rights management system had approved the viewing. And the approval was required each time the disk was to be played. Statistics on the user’s viewing habits were also collected. There were many problems associated with DivX, of which one of the most important was the dependency to the DivX company itself. Should the company cease to exist (as the case actually turned out to be), all disks purchased by all customers were useless. Furthermore, as a consumer, you were not able to take the disk to your friend’s home for a nice get-together evening, unless you had purchased permissions to view the disk also on your friend’s player. Furthermore, even the price for a disk was lower than that of a DVD, it was still higher than the DVD rental price. DivX is a good example of centrally controlled DRM, where the users do not know what they are paying for, since the rules may change at any time. It is also an interesting example of personally owned content, for which you may not own control rights. No wonder it did not get acceptance within the target consumer base. There are alternatives to heavy DRM and spying on consumers. One approach is to innovate alternative reward models, such as Creative 14 Common’s “Some rights reserved” approach. There are many licens- ing schemes available, though all of them require attribution: “You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it – but only if they give credit the way you request.” Means such as Creative Commons may be especially suitable for amateurs, while viral marketing may be the way to go for commercial markets (Helm 2000). Viral marketing describes any strategy that 12 http://www.dvdjournal.com/extra/divx.html 13 http://www.divx.com/ 14 http://www.creativecommons.org/