As innovation in the gaming industry grows unabated, the highly anticipated convergence of technologies in the entertainment market is overshadowed by politics and security issues surrounding content delivery and digital rights management. Hollywood has made copyright protection of its movies and music a priority, says Brad Hunt, CTO of Encino, Calif.-based Motion Picture Association of America. Hunt and the MPAA criticize technology vendors in no uncertain terms for failing to secure content and prevent widespread dissemination of copyrighted materials. On the other coast, Philip Wiser sees politics as a threat to technical development. While Wiser agrees that ownership rights have to be preserved, he cautions that there’s another side. The CTO of New York-based Sony Music Entertainment says new content distribution models are needed. Too much effort has been expended in defending digital rights of the music and movie industry to the exclusion of the development of new business and technology models, he says. Hunt says content providers will wait for vendors such as Microsoft to offer secure platforms before they fully commit to cooperate. “The PC is not at the point where it is a trusted computing platform,” Hunt says. “Content owners are looking for further development in improving security of the PC and at the same time they are realizing they need to get content online as opposed to peer-to-peer file copy networks.” For Hunt, the possibilities of peering networks are overshadowed by lost movie revenues as users illegally download movies. “We hope [vendors] are going to secure the PC. Content owners are looking for help with illegal p-to-p copying because it’s very hard to compete with free products,” MPAA’s CTO says. On the other hand, Sony’s Wiser says more effort is needed to take advantage of converged technologies to extend forms of music services. “The challenge is building a viable business, extending it, and bringing our partners with us,” Wiser says. “For example, for CDs you need to have a service component. If you as a customer buy a CD you get access to a subscription service to that artist.” The issue of secure content must be resolved, but new ways of doing business must be developed as well, Wiser says. “Security is a very real challenge because you have to be able to build a viable business,” he says. “But just locking things up isn’t going to solve anything.” — Jack McCarthy Software Development