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Music Labels
Movie Studios
Game Publishers
eBook Publishers
About The Author
Digital Content Owners
Who Need DRM
There is a lot to be said about the role of content owners in making online content distribution successful. Some of them - especially in music - have been resisting innovation with lawsuits more than embracing it. On that, we have a relevant anecdote here. As for movies, they have barely made it on line yet, but the studios are worried.
Gaming companies and electronic book publishers are more willing to experiment with consumer-friendly online distribution.
Music labels are faced with a near-impossible piracy problem. They deserve - and might normally get - some public sympathy for this. But they have mishandled the situation so badly that much of the public regards them as "fat cats" who deserve to be ripped off.
Music Labels
This is self-inflicted public relations problem is theirs to solve. There has been some progress recently; services such as itunes offer one-stop content from most music labels, and reasonable business models. However the actual DRM technology used is still disliked and, for the most part, not mitigated by creative business models.
Universal Music Group
Columbia Records
Sony Music
Sony owns both music content and DRM technology, as described here.
Vivendi Universal
Seems destined for bankruptcy in a famous case of mismanagement in France.
Warner Brothers Music
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Movie Studios
Movie studios are not yet faced with a serious piracy problem - at least in the Western world - but they can see the writing on the wall. It is possible to physically reproduce DVD movies, and this is an economic threat where large-scale pirates can operate with relative impunity, such as in parts of the Far East. Individual consumers who own high-end PCs with properly set-up DVD burners and software can also reproduce DVDs, one at a time. Today such set-ups are economically insignificant, and movie industry lawyers are trying to keep it that way, but the march of better-faster-cheaper in PC technology is difficult to stop.
There is no known way to technically prevent physical copying of DVDs, although it seems likely that some technology companies will try anyway, just as is being done for Red Book audio CDs.
It is also possible to "RIP" DVDs - or videotape movie screens - and post the results on the Internet. The impact is economically insignificant so far, but movie studios have been woken up by the MP3 phenomenon and do not wish to fall victim to the video equivalent. Their own efforts at posting "legitimate" movie content on the Internet have been timid to say the least. Only one significant Internet-based movie content site, movielink, has emerged, which took until late 2002 despite announcements made years earlier , and has had a poor reception.
The Motion Picture Association of America
The powerful lobby group of the American movie industry, whose leader, Jack Valenti, has been close to American presidents going back to Lyndon Johnson.
Disney
DreamWorks
Paramount
Sony / Columbia
Twentieth Century Fox
Universal Studios
Warner Brothers
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Game Software Publishers
The overall gaming industry is now larger, in terms of US sales, than the Hollywood movie industry. PC Game publishers were among the first to realize the value of on-line distribution, copy protection, and marketing techniques such as shareware and "try-before-you-buy." Though CD-ROM sales are still their mainstay, many are experimenting with novel distribution and DRM systems.Most of these publishers produce titles for console games as well as PCs. Game console DRM is just proprietary hardware-assisted anti-copy using special media, and isn't the main focus of this site. However it's worth noting that even these anti-copy systems are all cracked, but it has not spelled the death of the console software industry. Most users, most of the time, go for the reliability of the legal route.
Activision
Blizzard Entertainment
Electronic Arts
The Disney of gaming, with around $2 Billion in annual sales, twice as large as nearest rival Activision.
Infogrames
Red Storm Entertainment
Sierra On-Line
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Electronic Book Publishers
Book publishers are still very wary of electronic distribution. Most ebooks today are either free public-domain versions or are sold by electronic publishers who license them from traditional publishers. Protected ebooks use technology from either Microsoft or Adobe, which is routinely cracked, and Barnes and Noble on-line stopped selling eBooks in summer 2003.
eBooks are finding their place, but it is taking a long time and taking a toll on the suppliers who were banking on a "boom" to survive.
Here are a couple of links I know of.
Rosetta Books
The British Library
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